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THE WAKE

The Wake

Harmony + Singles

    Factory Benelux presents a new 3 disc black vinyl edition of Harmony, the debut album by influential Scottish group The Wake. Originally released by Factory Records in December 1982, this new expanded edition marks the 40th anniversary of this landmark post-punk album.

    The Wake formed in Glasgow in 1981 after singer/guitarist Caesar left Altered Images, and joined Factory the following year. Harmony was recorded at Strawberry Studios in Stockport with producer Chris Nagle (formerly Martin Hannett’s preferred engineer), by which time the group comprised Caesar (vocals, guitar), Carolyn Allen (keyboards), Steven Allen (drums) and Bobby Gillespie (bass). On release as Fact 60 the original 7 track mini album earned a 5 star review in Sounds magazine, hailed as the missing indiepop link between Factory and Postcard Records.

    CD Edition:
    Bonus tracks on CD1 include The Wake’s dub-informed second single, Something Outside, rare debut single On Our Honeymoon, and also their John Peel session from July 1983 – the last recordings to feature Gillespie before his departure for The Jesus and Mary Chain and Primal Scream.

    CD2 is a fascinating collection of 21 lost recordings compiled from live and demo cassettes located in the Rob Gretton tape archive, all taped between 1981 and 1983.

    The enhanced artwork for this new edition includes images of the band by noted photographer Paul Slattery, taken at the Mitchell Library in Glasgow, as well as new liner notes by Caesar.

    Vinyl Edition:
    Bonus tracks on Disc 2 include The Wake’s dub-informed second single, Something Outside b/w Host, and also their John Peel session from July 1983 – the last recordings to feature Gillespie before his departure for The Jesus and Mary Chain and Primal Scream.

    Disc 3 offers a desk recorded live set from Ayr Pavilion on 15 April 1983 during a tour with New Order. The concert includes several songs never recorded in the studio, including Recovery and Country of the Blind.

    The enhanced trifold artwork for this new edition includes images of the band by noted photographer Paul Slattery, taken at the Mitchell Library in Glasgow, as well as new liner notes by Caesar.


    TRACK LISTING

    CD1 Tracklist (Harmony + Singles):
    1. Favour
    2. Heartburn
    3. An Immaculate Conception
    4. Judas
    5. Testament
    6. Patrol
    7. The Old Men
    8. Chance
    9. Something Outside
    10. Host
    11. The Drill
    12. Uniform
    13. Here Comes Everybody
    14. On Our Honeymoon
    15. Give Up
    CD2 Tracklist (Lost Recordings 1981-83):
    1. Move With The Times 2.36
    2. Communion 2.39
    3. No More Green Space 2.48
    4. Move With The Times (reprise) 0.46
    5. Move With The Times 2.35
    6. Cold Home 3.03
    7. Communion 2.19
    8. No More Green Space 2.07
    9. Patrol 1.55
    10. Give Up 2.04
    11. Careering 2.34
    12. Favour 2.21
    13. Cold Home 2.22
    14. Forced To Think 1.40
    15. Patrol 2.38
    16. Give Up 2.01
    17. Move With The Times 2.04
    18. An Immaculate Conception 3.47
    19. Chance 3.49
    20. Judas 3.49
    21. Company 4.07

    Vinyl Tracklist:
    A1. Favour
    A2. Heartburn
    A3. An Immaculate Conception
    A4. Judas
    B1. Testament
    B2. Patrol
    B3. The Old Men
    B4. Chance
    C1. Something Outside
    C2. Host
    D1. The Drill (Peel)
    D2. Uniform (Peel)
    D3. Here Comes Everybody (Peel)
    E1. Heartburn (live)
    E2. Host (live)
    E3. Recovery (live)
    E4. Uniform (live)
    F1. The Old Men (live)
    F2. Something Outside (live)
    F3. Country Of The Blind (live)
    F4. The Drill (live)

    The Wake

    On Our Honeymoon

      The Wake formed in Glasgow (Scotland) in April 1981, after singer/ guitarist Caesar teamed up with drummer Steven Allen and a bassist, Joe Donnelly. Previously Caesar had played guitar in Altered Images, writing first single Dead Pop Stars and appearing on the first two John Peel sessions, but left the group shortly before they crashed into the mainstream pop charts with Happy Birthday.

      With few opportunities to play large live shows the new group financed a single on their own Scan 45 label, coupling upbeat indiepop number On Our Honeymoon with Give Up, a darker song featuring a keyboard line picked out by band friend Robert ‘Bobby’ Gillespie.


      TRACK LISTING

      Side A
      On Our Honeymoon
      Side B
      Give Up

      The Wake

      Pale Spectre / Plastic Flowers

        Part of The Optic Sevens Reissue Series. 
        Limited to 500 copies on splatter vinyl Includes Poster & Postcard.

        Originally released on Factory Records in 1987 on a 4 track 12” EP entitled “Something That No One Else Could Bring” These 2 tracks make their first appearance as a 7” single. 


        TRACK LISTING

        Side 1
        PALE SPECTRE

        Side 2
        PLASTIC FLOWERS

        Kathryn Joseph releases her new album From When I Wake The Want Is, via Glasgow’s Rock Action Records. The follow up to 2015’s acclaimed debut Bones You Have Thrown Me And Blood I’ve Spilled, which was named the Scottish Album of the Year, this album is a captivating set that documents both life’s traumas and their resolutions. Produced by Marcus Mackay, who also worked on her debut album, 'From When I Wake The Want Is' mixes new songs with material gathered over the past ten years to create an intimate and often devastating portrait of Joseph’s world.

        STAFF COMMENTS

        Barry says: Echoing piano and dusty atmospheric washes with touches of jazzy percussion make for a beautifully mournful but immersive backdrop for Joseph's evocative vocal touches. A stunningly fragile but brilliantly immersive listen.

        TRACK LISTING

        1. IIII
        2. From When I Wake The Want Is
        3. And You Survives
        4. Tell My Lover
        5. And It Will Lick You Clean
        6. There Is No God But You
        7. Safe
        8. We Have Been Loved By Our Lovers
        9. Mouths Full Of Blood
        10. Mountain
        11. Weight
        12. ^^

        * First ever anthology
        * Remastered from original sources
        * 2xLP housed in a deluxe gatefold tip-on jacket with 20-pg book, and download card full full anthology
        * Vinyl cut by John Golden and pressed at RTI
        * CD housed in a deluxe gatefold tip-on jacket with 48-pg book
        * Scholarly liner notes by Punk In Africa director Keith Jones
        * Unseen photos, flyers, and band ephemera

        The South Africa of the late 1970s was neither the right place nor time to launch a mixed-race punk band. Yet, following the student-inspired Soweto Uprising of 1976, it was also exactly the right conditions to foster a band like National Wake, one formed in an underground commune, and one whose very name exists in protest at the divisive, racist apartheid regime. Never before collected together, Light In The Attic is set to release National Wake’s full body of work as Walk In Africa 1979-81.

        Featured heavily in the Punk In Africa documentary, National Wake played punk, reggae and tropical funk, equally at home in the city’s rock underground and the township nightclub circuit. Ivan Kadey started the band with two brothers, Gary and Punka Khoza. The three were from different worlds –while Ivan was an outsider, a Jewish orphan born in the traditional Johannesburg immigrant neighborhood, Gary, Punka and their family were forcibly moved to the troubled township of Soweto under the apartheid regime. Later joined by guitarist Steve Moni, the whole band grew up against a backdrop of township unrest, social upheaval and suburban tedium that characterized apartheid-era South Africa.

        National Wake released just one album, in 1981. It sold approximately 700 copies before being withdrawn under government pressure. The band subsequently disintegrated, but their influence could be traced in the racially mixed post-punk underground centered around Rockey Street in Johannesburg throughout the 1980s, their legacy transmitted through fanzines and underground cassette trading.

        Sadly, Gary and Punka Khoza both passed away in their 40s. Kadey now works as an architect in Los Angeles, but his attention eventually turned back to the band as their legacy grew in the digital era, with the emergence of specialized music websites and Punk In Africa leading to their rediscovery. Czech State Radio memorably described the band as “perhaps the most dissident music scene of the 20th century: a multi-racial punk band in a fascist police state.”

        In 2011, Kadey re-released the band’s self-titled album, but spoke about having more than 20 tracks that had never seen the light of day –until now. “All of these recordings put together they speak of the whole evolution of the band,” he has said. “From a sort of naive, almost belief that we could miraculously change everything to realizing what a struggle it was, and what the country was going through and what it would go through.”

        TRACK LISTING

        1. International News
        2. It's All Right
        3. Walk In Africa
        4. Time And Place
        5. Corner House Stone
        6. Mercenaries
        7. Wake Of The Nation
        8. Supaman
        9. Speed It Up
        10. Beat Up The Lights
        11. Black Punk Rockers
        12. Stratocaster
        13. Everybody
        14. Vatsiketeni

        Palace Brothers

        Days In The Wake

          For a limited period both formats come with a free 5 postcard set in a printed wallet. Each postcard featuring the artwork of the release.

          The second Palace Brothers album was originally self-titled (or untitled), though the moniker "Days In The Wake" was appended to later pressings. The release is at once a progression from and reduction of the twisted lo-fi country-folk of the debut album. "Days In The Wake" is essentially just Oldham, his cracked tenor and his acoustic guitar. The songs aren't as unremittingly dark as on the previous recording, since Oldham injects a fair amount of stream-of-consciousness humour and light-hearted, elliptical song-poetry. The extreme sparseness amplifies the emotion in Oldham's voice and lyrics though, and on "You Will Miss Me When I Burn" the emotional desolation is harrowing, bringing to mind the best work of Mark Eitzel. The brainy non-sequiturs of the closing "I Am a Cinematographer" are evidence that there's more forethought than savant at work in Oldham's artistic process.

          Spiral Joy Band

          Wake Of The Dying Sun King

            "Wake Of The Dying Sun King" is the second full-length of epic meditative drone from this South Western Virginia collective. Like Pelt (with whom it shares several members), Spiral Joy Band uses mostly acoustic instruments to create slow, building pieces rich with human detail. The steady rolling of multiple Tibetan bowls, bowed and struck gongs, hypnotic fiddle, sruti box, and other instruments are recorded live in continuous performances that frequently stretch beyond an hour per piece. The performance aspect is key to Spiral Joy Band's aura - the variations in approach, force, etc. with which each tone is played, and the clear, open recording (mostly in Blacksburg's Glade baptist church) highlight the subtleties of the music.


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