Under-rated cold-wave Crepuscule classic revisited with Peel Session tracks and double-vinyl issue
10/10
Belgian indie-label Les Disques du Crepuscule was born in 1980 out of two people's passion for music, both live and on record. Little did Michel Duval and Annik Honore realize just how many little treasures would be unveiled in the coming years with 1982 a particularly productive one. Swimming, produced by Martin Hannett, is one such treasure.
Comprised of just nine songs and segued together with underwater reverberations and aquatic sonority, The Names' superb and timeless new-wave triumph is also gelled together with love, a little paranoia and the essence of the Lowlands. Dressed in an elaborate Benoit Hennebert cover, vaguely reminiscent of a Jackson Pollock piece, the artwork reveals little about the music, other than its understated beauty.
This reissue isn't the first one dedicated to the charms of the Brussels-based outfit's debut, but in its new vinyl clothes, is perhaps the most extravagant, albeit incomplete when compared to earlier versions. The newly-rejuvenated Factory Benelux is as good a place as any to reassemble the album, plus attendant singles and, for the first time, a quartet of Peel Session tracks recorded and transmitted in 1982.
Occupying musical space with Magazine, The Cure, early Life in a Day-era Simple Minds and Foxx-period Ultravox, The Names were by turns unfashionable but possessing of a certain amount of 'cool', if only for the obvious comparison with Hannett's previous projects, namely Joy Division. Discovery, Life by the Sea and This Is Harmony are big grown-up synth-rock stompers, coloured in by then-keyboardist Christophe Den Tandt's sultry piano tones and beat-sharp drums from Luc Capelle. Michel Sordinia's mournful vocals and Marc Deprez's jagged guitar-riffs complete the picture with the remaining tracks nothing short of sublime - The Fire, Floating World and Leave Her to Heaven might not match Shot By Both Sides, I Travel and Transmission for atmosphere and energy, but they certainly rank alongside some of the best that Devoto and the like released in later years.
The CD version of this reissue includes four Peel Session versions of key album songs with Discovery in particular benefiting from producer Kevin Howlett's less tricksy work behind the mixing-desk. Add in both sides of the band's only true Factory Benelux release, Calcutta, plus signature song Nightshift (though sadly not its almost-superior flip, I Wish I Could Speak Your Language).
But the real outstanding format comes in plastic - for 2013, the album has been stretched to a double vinyl-pressing in a gatefold sleeve, with sleeve-notes (from Mojo's Martin Aston) and extra tracks in the shape of The Astronaut, rare instrumental Music For Someone and the early pre-Swimming Spectators of Life. Even without Calcutta's and Nightshift's wonderous b-sides, this widescreen format of one of Crepuscule's prime recordings is still miles ahead from other eighties artefacts around at the moment. You. must. buy.
10/10
Comprised of just nine songs and segued together with underwater reverberations and aquatic sonority, The Names' superb and timeless new-wave triumph is also gelled together with love, a little paranoia and the essence of the Lowlands. Dressed in an elaborate Benoit Hennebert cover, vaguely reminiscent of a Jackson Pollock piece, the artwork reveals little about the music, other than its understated beauty.
This reissue isn't the first one dedicated to the charms of the Brussels-based outfit's debut, but in its new vinyl clothes, is perhaps the most extravagant, albeit incomplete when compared to earlier versions. The newly-rejuvenated Factory Benelux is as good a place as any to reassemble the album, plus attendant singles and, for the first time, a quartet of Peel Session tracks recorded and transmitted in 1982.
Occupying musical space with Magazine, The Cure, early Life in a Day-era Simple Minds and Foxx-period Ultravox, The Names were by turns unfashionable but possessing of a certain amount of 'cool', if only for the obvious comparison with Hannett's previous projects, namely Joy Division. Discovery, Life by the Sea and This Is Harmony are big grown-up synth-rock stompers, coloured in by then-keyboardist Christophe Den Tandt's sultry piano tones and beat-sharp drums from Luc Capelle. Michel Sordinia's mournful vocals and Marc Deprez's jagged guitar-riffs complete the picture with the remaining tracks nothing short of sublime - The Fire, Floating World and Leave Her to Heaven might not match Shot By Both Sides, I Travel and Transmission for atmosphere and energy, but they certainly rank alongside some of the best that Devoto and the like released in later years.
The CD version of this reissue includes four Peel Session versions of key album songs with Discovery in particular benefiting from producer Kevin Howlett's less tricksy work behind the mixing-desk. Add in both sides of the band's only true Factory Benelux release, Calcutta, plus signature song Nightshift (though sadly not its almost-superior flip, I Wish I Could Speak Your Language).
But the real outstanding format comes in plastic - for 2013, the album has been stretched to a double vinyl-pressing in a gatefold sleeve, with sleeve-notes (from Mojo's Martin Aston) and extra tracks in the shape of The Astronaut, rare instrumental Music For Someone and the early pre-Swimming Spectators of Life. Even without Calcutta's and Nightshift's wonderous b-sides, this widescreen format of one of Crepuscule's prime recordings is still miles ahead from other eighties artefacts around at the moment. You. must. buy.