'Historical Era' Pere Ubu Albums |
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The Modern Dance (Jan 1978) Produced by Pere Ubu and Ken Hamann. Fire Records FIRECD360 cd. Aug 21 2015. 2015 Master. Fire Records FIRELP360 vinyl. Aug 21 2015. 2015 Master. Also included on the Elitism For The People box set. |
Jon Savage, Sounds, 2/11/78
Uh-oh, this is getting frustrating, trying to tell you how good this is - black and white is an inadequate substitute for the impact heard... This is a brilliant debut. Granted it lacks the superficial accessibility of lesser works, but this time around the aroma lingers. This is built to last! Ubu's world is rarely comfortable, full of the space beyond the electric light and what it does to people, but always direct and unwavering. And courageous. Ian Birch, Melody Maker, 3/18/78 It's a devastating debut...this album has struck me with a vengeance. Because it delivers such a powerful, complex and open-ended punch, it's almost impossible at such an early stage to explain why or how in full detail. David Stubbs, Uncut, August 2006 - 5 Stars This is a far more cerebral, imperishable proposition than a mere local cry of urban discontent. The Eraserhead-style sad-clown personna of singer David Thomas, Tom Herman's nerve-shredding slide guitars and Ravenstine's abstract electronics combine to form a rock music as visceral and essential as The Stooges, yet which reaches parts of the brain untouched by their peers, predecessors or successors... An album that's only gotten more awesome with age. |
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Links and Background: Lyrics • FAQ • The Annotated Modern Dance • Digital transfer and remastering explained
Produced by Pere Ubu and Ken Hamann. 2005 Master: Digitally transfered at 96khz / 24 bit resolution and mastered by David Thomas and Paul Hamann at Suma on August 16 2005. Cds from this master can be identified by the words "2005 Master" on the back tray card.
NB. A pressing plant error meant that old artwork was used to package the one pressing run of the 2005 Master. In these cases there's a sticker on the front identifying it as the 2005 Master and the cd label is black and white with an Avant Garage logo.
5.1 Master: This DualDisc release features a mix in 5.1 surround sound by Chris Haynes, Silverline Studios, Los Angeles CA, June 15-17 2005, from digital transfers of the original 2" multitrack tapes. The DualDisc format is a two-sided DVD. One side is the 5.1 surround sound remix of the album, a 30 minute interview with David Thomas, and a 2005 master of the 2-track master mix tape from 1977 at 96 khz / 24 bit resolution. The other side is a cd audio format of the 2005 master at 44 khz / 16 bit resolution, which is playable on standard audio cd players. Silverline Records are distirbuted by Essential Music UK.
David Thomas, who attended the surround sound remix session by Chris Haynes, reports: "This is the way we heard The Modern Dance in the studio... no, it's better than that, it's the way we heard it when we were playing it. The detailing is fantastic. The space reveals everything while still retaining the album's intensity and original intention. And the best thing is, if you want to hear something louder or quieter you just move your head a foot. Everything is there!"
1994 Master: Digital transfer at 44.1 khz / 20 bit resolution and mastered by David Thomas and Paul Hamann at Suma in 1994. Nonalignment Pact and Modern Dance Recorded January 1977 at Cleveland Recording and engineered by Ken Hamann. Modern Dance is a remix of the Hearpen 45 side. Street Waves Recorded and mixed October 1976 at Cleveland Recording engineered by Ken Hamann. It is a remix of the Hearpen 45 side. Laughing, Chinese Radiation, Life Stinks, Real World, Over My Head, Sentimental Journey and Humor Me Recorded and mixed November 1977 at Suma, engineered by Ken Hamann. Songs written by Herman - Krauss - Maimone - Thomas - Ravenstine, except 'Life Stinks' written by Laughner. ©1978 Fire Songs, under license from Ubu Projex in USA/Canada. ©1978 Virgin Music-BMG VM Music Ltd in Rest of World. Pere Ubu (v.3.0): David Thomas - vocals, musette, percussion Tom Herman - guitar, backing vocals Allen Ravenstine - EML 101 & 200 analog synthesizers, sax, tapes Tony Maimone - bass, piano, backing vocals Scott Krauss - drums
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Dub Housing (November 17 1978) Produced by Pere Ubu and Ken Hamann. Fire Records FIRECD362 cd. Aug 21 2015. 2015 Master. Fire Records FIRELP362 vinyl. Aug 21 2015. 2015 Master. Also included on the Elitism For The People box set. |
Jon Savage, Melody Maker, 11/4/78
A week is a month and you could be forgiven for thinking that the times would catch up with Pere Ubu (and overtake them) as they do so many others... Here, on their second album, Pere Ubu outflank and transcend these pressures. Not gratuitously but through the breadth and consistency of their vision. (I think I like it.) At very first, "Dub Housing" appears harsh, impenetrable and repellent... it seems to be working on some hidden internal logic, from some parallel (and disquieting) universe. On subsequent listens, the "logic," if indeed the tapping of the subconscious and intuition can be called "logic," becomes clearer; the album remains baffling, infuriating, haunting, menacing and ferociously funny... As in "The Modern Dance," they stomp all over "rock n roll's" accepted language and then create, with fire and discipline, one of their own...This album will last. New Musical Express Considered in a reasonably recent rock stream, it [Dub Housing] is more aggressively "symphonic" than Henry Cow (deep), but more sympathetically alienated or alienating than The Sex Pistols (shallow). Conventional avant garde music can sometimes be too wrapped up in educated guesswork. Pere Ubu play within terms of a possible resolution, but not into one. People are annoyed by Ubu's accessibility. Or ashamed! Artrocker, December 2008 Ancient modernism... A telescope into the future. And we're still not there, thirty years later. |
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Links and Background: Lyrics • Digital transfer and remastering explained
Produced by Pere Ubu and Ken Hamann.
Original lp mastered at Air Studios, London. ©1978 Fire Songs, under license from Ubu Projex in USA/Canada. ©1978 Virgin Music-BMG VM Music Ltd in Rest of World.
Pere Ubu (v.3.2):
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New Picnic Time (Sept. 1979) Produced by Pere Ubu and Ken Hamann. Fire Records FIRECD363 cd. Mar 18 2016 (UK), Apr 29 2016 (ROW). 2015 Master. (Fire Records FIRELP363 lp - as part of Architecture Of Language box set) |
Dave McCullough, Sounds, 9/15/79
It's a drunken, wanton, wilful sounding album with a spine as elastic and as totally absorbing as Beefheart...exhilarating, funny, somehow very vital music. John Orme, Melody Maker, 9/8/79 They don't ask to be loved, but they do invite it. Whichever, they are open to instant embrace or rejection. Their music doesn't float on calm waters: it submerges, spurts, takes rapids, often half-drowns on its back...Having fallen in a big way for the last Ubu album, I approached "New Picnic Time" with much suspicion... Ubu have developed a wider maturity in scope, feeling and atmosphere, and I can only praise them for it. Don't forget to laugh. Scott Laurence, Herald-American, 7/5/99 Weird. Weird and wonderful. Weird, wonderful and so far beyond the expected that these deconstructions of popular music are as charmingly retro as the Beatles and as modern as today's blendings of funk, hip-hop and alt-rock. Revolutionary and demented yet full of fun, Pere Ubu are indispensible to any collection of 20th century rock. |
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Links and Background: Lyrics • Digital transfer and remastering explained Produced by Pere Ubu and Ken Hamann.
Engineered by Ken and Paul Hamann.
Artwork designed by John Thompson. ©1979 Fire Songs under license from Ubu Projex for North America, and Virgin Music-BMG VM Music Ltd. for Rest Of World. The words to 'Voice of The Sand' are taken from a poem by Vachel Lindsay.
Pere Ubu (v.3.2):
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The Art Of Walking (June 1980) Produced by Pere Ubu and Paul Hamann. Fire Records FIRECD364 cd. Mar 18 2016 (UK), Apr 29 2016 (ROW). 2015 Master. (Fire Records FIRELP364 lp - as part of Architecture Of Language box set) |
Chris Cutler, Melody Maker, 1980
Ubu are moving even further from the conventions of rock music - and from their own past - but still moving forward, without a doubt, and losing none of their integrity as a group. Much of the music operates like a loose-bound net, where apparently hardly connected parts can co-exist, somehow still adding up at the end to an irreducible whole... this is a record of unique beauty - a beauty marked by truth and thus also tragic and sometimes painful. Ian Penman, New Musical Express, 8/30/80 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. Dave McCullough, Sounds, 8/30/80 So, things being as they are, we're supposed to keep our eyes firmly closed (lest they reveal the relative dirgeness of all else) when a record as exciting and as funnily subversive as 'The Art of Walking' comes around... If [it] is difficult then I'm much much cleverer than I thought, and every other 'successful' music I've heard this year in comparison must be roughly equivalent to sticking your thumb in your mouth and sucking long and hard... The only way [it] isn't a record full of much excitement, fun and compelling interest is if you don't want it to be so. |
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Links and Background: Bug Report • Lyrics • Press release • Digital transfer and remastering explained Produced by Pere Ubu and Paul Hamann.
Engineered by Paul Hamann. 2008 Master, Director's Cut: Digitally transferred at 192khz / 24 bit resolution and mastered by Paul Hamann at Suma in 2008. Cds from this Master are identified with the words "2008 Master" on the tray card in the lower left. Includes bonus tracks of 'Misery Goats (Jew's Harp),' 'Arabian Nights' and 'Tribute To Miles.' 1994 Master: Digitally transferred at 44.1 khz / 20 bit resolution and mastered by David Thomas and Paul Hamann at Suma in 1994. This is the most fluid record in Ubu history. The Director's Cut contains all the variants as extras. For the whole byzantine story click here. Songs written by Krauss - Maimone - Ravenstine - Thomas - Thompson, except 'Horses' written by Thompson. ©1980 Fire Songs under license from Ubu Projex for North America, except 'Horses' which is Music-Language (BMI), and Virgin Music-BMG VM Music Ltd. for Rest Of World, except 'Horses,' which is Music-Language (BMI).
Pere Ubu (v.4.0):
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Song Of The Bailing Man (April 1982) Produced by Adam Kidron. Fire Records FIRECD365 cd. Mar 18 2016 (UK), Apr 29 2016 (ROW). 2015 Master. (Fire Records FIRELP365 lp - as part of Architecture Of Language box set) |
David Fricke, Melody Maker(?)
'Song of the Bailing Man' is an inspired, invigorating, confounding, disturbing... yeah, one hell of a swinging way to go. Still the futility Ubu must have felt making far sighted music in a chronically near-sighted world is pressed hard into these grooves. Time Out A brilliant band breaking every rule of aesthetics... and sounding all the more exciting for it. Alternative Press, 4/00, pp.95-6 Continues the downbeat trend, with even its more rocking tracks...suffused with melancholy confusion....This disc is an essential purchase, but they're definitely not dancefloor or party fodder. The Wire, 4/00, p.63 Swathed in layers of reverb-as-sugarcoating and [drummer, Anton] Fier's backbeats ensure that every song here moves several bpm faster than anything else in [their] catalog....easily Ubu's most accessible material. |
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Links and Background: Lyrics • Press release • Digital transfer and remastering explained
Produced by Adam Kidron.
Pere Ubu (v.4.1):
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