The past couple of weeks or so have been “crunch time” for finishing up production and re-records for a new Soft Riot album that I’ll be taking over to France tomorrow to mix with a friend (as well as an audio engineer extraordinaire) in this studio in the countryside for the week. Aside from jumping into the creative and technical task of being emersed in mixing all of the songs over the course of the stay there, I’m also looking forward to a change of scene in terms of the slow, isolated pace of being in a rural environment, catching up on some reading and breaking some routines I’ve been getting into over the last little while that have been driving me a bit batty.
It’s during these “crunch times” I’m not listening to a lot of music by other artists during this time, or at least not the extent of in-depth listening that I usually would as my own tracks I’m working on sort of course in and out of my brain frequently, blocking other music out. Lately I’ve also been catching up on a lot of Werner Herzog films that I haven’t seen in years, and a good number I have yet to see, so perhaps in the background there’s the pastoral sounds of Herzog’s go-to soundtracks for his films, and that being Popul Vuh.
Today on a quite, sunny yet crisp autumn afternoon I opted to fall back to listening to a record that has been a hazy, lush listen on occasional given Sundays over the last twenty plus years since I discovered that album and the artist. The artist in this case is Felt — who what I guess one could call a jangle/dream pop band out of Warwickshire, England who had a ten year run starting in 1979, coming out with their début LP in 1982 by the name of Crumbling The Antiseptic Beauty, released on the long running UK indie label, Cherry Red.
Like a lot of young musicians during this period, Felt — mainly revolving around the frontman/guitarist, monomously known as Lawrence — found initial inspiration in the punk explosion that happened in the UK in the latter half of the 1970s, and this is evident on Felt’s first released track from 1979, “Index” (see clip below), which is self-recorded session probably done in a bedroom, featuring a driving, semi-distorted guitar and some unintelligible, effected vocal mumblings behind the driving chords of the guitar.
A year later Felt would flesh out into a full band, with the addition of classically-trained guitarist Maurice Deebank who would add a signature dimension and style of playing to what Felt would release next, and that’s their aforementioned début LP. As when I first heard this record and even when I come back to it at times to this day, including today, I’m surrounded by imagery and feelings of lush, verdent landscapes; a strange abstract romanticism and perhaps a bit of that feeling of being a young ‘un and discovering the world again from experience.
The track from this album that sticks out for me most is the third, “Birdmen”, starting with Lawrence’s jangly major chords followed by a dreamy, tribal tom pattern — as do all of the other songs, noting a complete absence of anything relating to traditional drum kit cymbals or hi-hats which was a detailed, aesthetic choice for at least this album. Then comes in the light, airy, noodly meanderings of Deebank’s simply played by almost labyrinthine guitar lines. It feels like a hazy, summer day with the puffy heads of sprouting dandelions gently floating through the air, and the sunlight seems to give everything a bleached out, intoxicating quality.
When listening to this album, I always tended to listen to its offering of six tracks followed by the album that was released after it, The Splendour Of Fear, which was released to years later. This album follows a similar approach but with a more lush and effected sound, and far more instrumental in nature, with only two of the five album tracks containing vocals. A highlight for me from this album would be “The Stagnant Pool” (see clip below), with a bit of a spritely triplet swing to the guitars and drum fills here.
After these two albums Felt would continue to release continual records throughout the decade, yet changing the sound to be less of the signature sound they established on the first two albums. Their fourth album, 1985’s Ignite The Seven Cannons, contains the popular Felt track “Primitive Painters” (see clip below) featuring the vocals of Cocteau Twin’s Elizabeth Fraser. Following this some of the members from the band’s original line-up would disappear, including the invaluable Maurice Deebank, bassist Mick Lloyd and so on. 1988’s Train Above The City album doesn’t even feature Lawrence at all.
Lawrence would eventually move onto more colourful and upbeat projects from the 1990s onward including the bubblegum/glam rock influenced Denim and in more recent years, Mozart Estate. He was also the subject of a documentary called Lawrence of Belgravia that came out in the early 2010s of which the trailer for that is posted below.
The below link features purchasable downloads of both the Crumbling The Antiseptic Beauty and The Splendour Of Fear albums, which are generally grouped together on any given number of CD re-issues of these albums.