Pompeii (Yellow Vinyl)
Availability: In stock
£21.00
Availability: In stock
Indie exclusive translucent sun yellow vinyl LP.
Pompeii, Cate Le Bon’s sixth full-length studio album and the follow up to 2019’s Mercury- nominated Reward, bears a storied title summoning apocalypse, but the metaphor eclipses any “dissection of immediacy,” says Le Bon. Not to downplay her nod to disorientation induced by double catastrophe — global pandemic plus climate emergency’s colliding eco-traumas resonate all too eerily. “What would be your last gesture?” she asks. But just as Vesuvius remains active, Pompeii reaches past the current crises to tap into what Le Bon calls “an economy of time warp” where life roils, bubbles, wrinkles, melts, hardens, and reconfigures unpredictably, like lava—or sound, rather. Like she says in the opener, “Dirt on the Bed,” Sound doesn’t go away / In habitual silence / It reinvents the surface / Of everything you touch.
Pompeii is sonically minimal in parts, and its lyrics jog between self-reflection and direct address. Vulnerability, although “obscured,” challenges Le Bon’s tendencies towards irony. Written primarily on bass and composed entirely alone in an “uninterrupted vacuum,” Le Bon plays every instrument (except drums and saxophones) and recorded the album largely by herself with long-term collaborator and co-producer Samur Khouja in Cardiff, Wales. Enforced time and space pushed boundaries, leading to an even more extreme version of Le
Bon’s studio process – as exits were sealed, she granted herself “permission to annihilate identity.” “Assumptions were destroyed, and nothing was rejected” as her punk assessments of existence emerged.
The songs of Pompeii feel suspended in time, both of the moment and instant but reactionary and Dada-esque in their insistence to be playful, satirical, and surreal. From the spirited, strutting bass fretwork of “Moderation”, to the sax-swagger of “Running Away”; a tale exquisite in nature but ultimately doomed (The fountain that empties the world / Too beautiful to hold), escapism lives as a foil to the outside world. Pompeii’s audacious tribute to memory, compassion, and mortal salience is here to stay.
You may also like...
Simultaneous Flight Movement (CD)
£9.99Original price was: £9.99.£6.00Current price is: £6.00.Laura Cannell
Medieval cantigas intertwine with the music of long disintegrated renaissance courts. Limited edition CD digipak.
- Quick ViewAdd to basket
A Letter From Treetops (CD)
£10.99Pneumatic Tubes
A collection of sonic Polaroids with soothing powers. 5 stars. CD edition.
- Quick ViewAdd to basket
Landed (Vinyl)
£22.00Can
The band’s seventh studio album, originally released in 1975. Remastered 2014 vinyl reissue, with download code.
Moonbuilding Issue 2
£10.00Original price was: £10.00.£8.00Current price is: £8.00.Moonbuilding
Issue 2. A5, 48-page full-colour magazine, plus 13-track CD. In conjunction with Castles in Space.
Ammmusic (Vinyl)
£23.00Amm
Long-awaited reissue of the 1966 album from the legendary avant-garde experimentalists who influenced Syd Barrett among many others. Remastered Vinyl LP.
Stop Motion Happening (CD)
£11.99Original price was: £11.99.£9.00Current price is: £9.00.The Focus Group
…what an imaginative, challenging, funny and crookedly beautiful world it is. CD edition.