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The "XTC are really really good" thread

Started by Stoneage Dinosaurs, July 19, 2015, 12:48:13 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

purlieu

I've been meaning to start a Newell / Cleaners From Venus thread for ages, especially when I look at this thread. Sadly I'm going offline in a minute so won't be able to this time either...

Brundle-Fly

Quote from: purlieu on October 04, 2015, 09:16:03 PM
I've been meaning to start a Newell / Cleaners From Venus thread for ages, especially when I look at this thread. Sadly I'm going offline in a minute so won't be able to this time either...

Consider it done!

Head Gardener



another XTC spin off, sorry if it's been posted earlier but if it hasn't wahey!

Brundle-Fly


Crabwalk

Bloody hell, I'd no idea he'd come (briefly) out of retirement! How did that pass everyone by last year?

Brundle-Fly

There was also these rare recent Moulding outings. All AOR covers but still nice to hear his plaintive Wiltshire tones again.

Checkpoint Karma
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6JZCyt14zo

It's Raining Again
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6ky_HF8Qw4

Brain Damage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JxgSZGwMUE

Take The Money And Run
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBEIfZeH9eQ


This demo is a great new find though from the O&L era

Raising a family in a house full of mice
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S76Xn09w9CE


Crabwalk

#96
A reminder that if you pre-order before 16th October, your Oranges & Lemons Blu-Ray/CD will come with a postcard signed by Mr Moulding himself.

https://www.burningshed.com/store/ape/


QuoteOranges And Lemons is the third in a series of expanded XTC album reissues, including 5.1 Surround mixes, new stereo mixes and High-Resolution stereo mixes by Steven Wilson, along with a wealth of extra audio and visual material

The Drums & Wires and Nonsuch sets were stellar value and I can't wait for this one.

daf

Cheers Crabbers - I hadn't realised there was a time-limited bonus Moulding scribble up for grabs!

To get us in the mood, here's a rather charming cover of the incredible bass line from Mayor of Simpleton  :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqsY-9Riyfg

All credit to Partridge here - he wrote the riff, and insisted Colin stuck to it note for note -
QuoteAP: But the one they mention is "Mayor," and Colin had to work very hard to get that bass line. It's very precise. It took me a long time to work it out, because I wanted to get into the J.S. Bach mode of each note being the perfect counterpoint to where the chords are and where the melody is. The bass is the third part in the puzzle.

TB: You do that a lot in your songs.

AP: Yeah, it's a compulsion. On many of the songs I don't tell him which exact notes to play, but with this one, I said, "You have to play this bass line, because it's taken me weeks to work this out." I went through and worked it out a note at a time, to go with where the vocal note was at, where the implied guitar chords were, where the actual notes of the guitar being twanged to make that implied chord were. It was built scientifically, it was [laughs] precision-engineered so that every note is in the perfect place. And I think Colin liked the bass line, because we talked about it sounding like a collegiate peal of bells.
http://chalkhills.org/articles/XTCFans20070107.html


Head Gardener


Nowhere Man

My favourite songs so far (all the blindingly obvious i'd imagine) -

Statue Of Liberty
This Is Pop
Making Plans For Nigel
Ten Feet Tall
Respectable Street
Generals and Majors
Towers Of London
Sgt. Rock
Ball And Chain
Senses Working Overtime
Jason and The Argonauts
Love On A Farmboys Wages
Living Through Another Cuba
Summers Cauldron/
Grass
The Meeting Place
Earn Enough For Us
Dear God
The Mayor Of Simpleton
King For A Day
The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead
Wrapped In Grey
River of Orchids
Easter Theatre
I'd Like That
Stupidly Happy

I can't stop listening to this band, I keep coming back to them, day after day

purlieu

Yes, they definitely get you like that. For a long time I had a different song from Skylarking in my head while at work, simply because it was about the only album I listened to for a month straight.

garbed_attic

Just want to chime in with the 'they're great' camp. Just so many hooks and such sly humour. One of those bands that deserved ludicrous levels of fame but didn't get it cause they were a funny lookin' bunch of lads.

Brundle-Fly

I just find it incredible how much they progressed musically from jerky new wave pop to psychedelic folk symphonies in a mere ten years; when you think how so many bands plough the same furrow for most of their careers. I wonder if they'd stayed together and recorded at least a few more albums what direction they might have gone? My hunch is that they would have experimented with stripped down world music sounds and dabbled in field recordings.

Stoneage Dinosaurs

They'd have done a Scritti Politti and gone all hip-hop.

Waking Life

Quote from: purlieu on October 20, 2015, 09:03:03 PM
Yes, they definitely get you like that. For a long time I had a different song from Skylarking in my head while at work, simply because it was about the only album I listened to for a month straight.
This happened to me too. I got hooked on Skylarking due to this thread. Except I also became addicted to Odessey and Oracle by The Zombies in the same week (by coincidence). It didn't help that it was the height of summer and sweltering outside.

It actually got to the point where I'd be hearing the melodies from these albums - sometimes meshed together - in my sleep most nights. It was pretty bad.

I've kicked it now though and tried Drums and Wires; it's just not the same.

Brundle-Fly

Quote from: Waking Life on October 21, 2015, 10:11:39 PM
This happened to me too. I got hooked on Skylarking due to this thread. Except I also became addicted to Odessey and Oracle by The Zombies in the same week (by coincidence). It didn't help that it was the height of summer and sweltering outside.

It actually got to the point where I'd be hearing the melodies from these albums - sometimes meshed together - in my sleep most nights. It was pretty bad.

I've kicked it now though and tried Drums and Wires; it's just not the same.

Try English Settlement.

purlieu

Oranges & Lemons is probably your best bet if you want another set of addictive melodies; English Settlement has some corkers but focuses just as heavily on rhythm at time. It's certainly not in the same Zombies/Beach Boys territory as the late '80s stuff.

Head Gardener


Head Gardener

This just arrived in the mail, looking forward to kicking back and diving into it tonight





it also came with a Colin Moulding signed postcard




daf

Accidentally stumbled across a hidden track easter egg on this  [nb]
Spoiler alert
I won't spoil the surprise!
[close]
[/nb] - now I'm wondering if the previous two blu rays also had extra bits tucked away.

Noticed that the original album mix is actually the 2001 remaster that accidentally contain'd a couple of wrong mixes (missing the little silent gap bit in Garden and with that annoying extra 'tonk-tonk-tonk-tonk' percussion in King for a Day) - so hang on to that '89 CD if you have it!

Brundle-Fly

A catchy little 2010 musical tribute for the XTC nerd. You'll all be humming it in the morning.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWseCUlyz08

Crabwalk

#111
My joy at the package's arrival - complete with Mr Moulding signed card to add to Partidge's D&W one last year - has been tempered by the Blu-Ray not playing beyond the Ape logo. Anyone else had this problem?

So I've been caning the new Stereo mix instead. Quite fantastic by Steven Wilson again. Pin sharp and beautifully warm.

Oranges and Lemons was my first XTC album, bought second hand on CD in 1994. I liked the opening three tracks but wasn't at all keen on what I considered to be the over-produced mush that followed. So I foolishly abandoned the band until the early 2000s, when I obtained Black Sea on vinyl and finally had the epiphany.

O&L has grown in my affections since, but 'Mayor of Simpleton' aside, I've never considered it to contain any of their very greatest songs, and believed it suffers badly from poor quality control and over-indulgence. However, the subtle charms of tracks like 'Cynical Days', 'Chalkhills & Children' and 'One of the Millions' have really started to grip me in recent years and this new edition has done wonders for several other songs too.

The bigger budget and longer recording period really shows on this mix - it's really densely layered with multiple guitar parts, percussion, samples and keyboards. There's loads of fresh detail and texture to soak up, and it sounds less generically glossy than previous CD versions, greatly helping the more traditionally 'rocking' songs like 'Merely a Man'.

'Pink Thing' is still funny, but musically mundane, and the synths on 'Miniature Sun' are as hideous as ever.

At 40 minutes, Oranges & Lemons could've been one of XTC's absolute best, but even with this brilliant new mix, it really drags towards the end at 60 odd minutes.

Two quick final observations: firstly, Dave Gregory should definitely write a book about XTC. His notes are always incredibly detailed, illuminating and insightful. Secondly, I  think O&L may be the pinnacle of Colin Moulding's bass playing. Just astonishing on pretty much every track. So inventive and melodic, even by his standards.

Edit: sorry for the surfeit of superlatives. I can't help myself when it comes to XTC...

Stoneage Dinosaurs

Saw on Andy's twitter that he apparently gave David Byrne the idea for the Heads album title "More Songs about Buildings and Food"

daf

Quote from: Crabwalk on October 29, 2015, 09:46:19 PM
So I've been caning the new Stereo mix instead. Quite fantastic by Steven Wilson again. Pin sharp and beautifully warm.

Dissapointed he didn't mix out that intrusive percussion in King for a Day (they used the wrong mix by mistake in the 2001 remasters) -
That repeating coconut 'tonk-tonk-tonk' percussion simply should not be that loud or run all the way though - it's totally distracting, and also obscures the lovely backward guitar riff.

Almost every version on youtube seems to have been automatically replaced by that abomination of a mix  [nb] (that is trash, that is dirt, that is filth! What possessed them to create such a disgusting, degeneratized mix as that? . . . And I'm complimenting them by considering it a mix)[/nb] and I could only find this rough video - the sound's a bit muffly, but it does has that original mix with the luscious backward bits in full ear-view :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fq7YFYQAdLo


daf

Quote from: Crabwalk on October 29, 2015, 09:46:19 PM
. . . tempered by the Blu-Ray not playing beyond the Ape logo. Anyone else had this problem?

There's a bit of talk about this on the Steve Hoffman forum - seems to be a problem with the PS3
http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/xtc-oranges-lemons-blu-ray-clarification.475683/
QuoteAnyway - in summary please, please do not get in touch with either Burning Shed or Amazon as they will not yet be able to help but instead please report the issue to Playstation or Sony support. The more reports they get about this the more chance they will fix the problem quickly.

Crabwalk

It's not just PS3s, it seems to be unplayable on many different Sony BluRay players. Pain in the arse.

Head Gardener

well fucked up BIG time as I have neither a PS3 nor a BluRay player

Brundle-Fly


Head Gardener


daf

#119
Mine plays fine, but I've never updated the firmware, and wouldn't know how to do it anyway - as it's not connected to the internet.

Why do blu-rays need this constant stream of new firmware anyway? Stop tinkering you maniacs!