Staff Reviews

Pere Ubu - Architecture of Language

Review by Gavin Miller

Pere Ubu sacrificed mainstream success to explore the outer fringes of music’s possibilities»

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Pere Ubu reinvented rock music from the ground up. Equally at ease with Sun Ra and The Monkees, Glen Campbell and The MC5, Can and The Raspberries, they are the white Funkadelic. 2015's box set release, 'Elitism For The People 1975-1978' is a veritable primer for exploring the possibilities of popular music. It documents the band "creating their own private musical apocalypse and then forging on to start the world anew" (Uncut, Jim Wirth). The second in the series of box sets, 'Architecture Of Language 1979-1982,' gathers together "the scariest album ever recorded," 'New Picnic Time,' with its companion releases, 'The Art Of Walking' and 'Song Of The Bailing Man.' These are records of "unique beauty - a beauty marked by truth and thus also tragic and sometimes painful" (Sounds, Chris Cutler). Ian Penman, writing in 1980 in the New Musical Express, said "It is obvious that (the history of) Pere Ubu should not be thought of in terms of a linear development - reducing its entire operation and presence to an exclusive concern for working and succeeding in rock and roll. Unfortunately, most criticism - of Pere Ubu, of many other folks - assumes that words have one meaning, that desires point in a single direction, that ideas are logical; it ignores the fact that the world of language, noise and desire is one of lack, insecurity, interruption, struggle, blundering, disguises, ploys, embarrassed grins." Mastered by Brian Pyle, the original quarter-inch stereo mix tapes were digitally transferred by Paul Hamann at Suma at a 192khz / 24 bit resolution. From these the vinyl LPs were cut by Pete Norman with a Neumann VMS80 lathe. The Coed Jail Tour marks the release of the box with a set list drawn exclusively from the recordings of 1975-1982. Tom Herman, guitarist from 1975 to 1979 and from 1997 to 2002, rejoins the band for the tour. The line-up is David Thomas, Tom Herman, Robert Wheeler, Michele Temple and Steve Mehlman. Wheeler and Temple have been in Pere Ubu since 1994, Mehlman since 1995. ​Box set, 4LPs, poster, download card. 4LP box set with new masters of the albums 'New Picnic Time' (1979), 'The Art Of Walking' (1980) and 'Song Of The Bailing Man' (1982) plus a disk of extras, 'Architectural Salvage', 'Co-Ed jail' poster and download postcard.
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