Crocodiles

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According to Sergeant: “It’s all pretty dark”. He wasn’t wrong, but it didn’t matter – with Ocean Rain, the Bunnymen became music immortals, confirming their place in the gloomier recesses of British pop. Immediately before the release of the band's next album What Are You Going to Do with Your Life? (1999), Les Pattinson quit to take care of his mother. [31] McCulloch and Sergeant have continued to tour and record as Echo & the Bunnymen, touring repeatedly and releasing the albums Flowers (2001), Siberia (2005), The Fountain (2009) and Meteorites (2014). The Siberia band line up was Ian McCulloch, Will Sergeant, Paul Fleming (keyboards), Simon Finley (drums) and Pete Wilkinson (bass), Hugh Jones produced Siberia after previously engineering early Bunnymen albums. Since August 2009 the group's touring incarnation has comprised McCulloch and Sergeant along with Stephen Brannan (bass), Gordy Goudie (guitar), Nicholas Kilroe (drums) and Jez Wing (keyboards). Very similar to Echo & The Bunnymen - Crocodiles. However, this version has an alternate barcode format with leading "0" printed on the tray card. It’s all about the irresistible chemistry between McCulloch and the camera. By the end, we’ve been transported from the sound studio to a garish set straight out of Star Trek, where the Bunnymen are hunted by a couple of women in lurid space suits. Who said they don’t have a sense of humour?

There are references, too, to Hamburg and the Star-Club, where The Beatles served their apprenticeship, and to Corbijn’s native Netherlands, as well as Venice and Morocco. As daft and delightful as the song itself. The real gold on Ocean Rain can be found on The Killing Moon, the first single. Les Pattinson recalled, “Me and Will (Sergeant) had been in Russia for a holiday, and there was this band playing balalaikas in a hotel foyer, real cheesy cabaret. Matrix / Runout (Side B runout, variant 4): KODE 1 B-1 F/2 WITH FLOWERS A̶̷̲̅N̶̷̲̅D̶̷̲̅ IИ THEIR HAIR ARUN Like Porcupine, the making of the album proved to be a difficult and protracted process. Early sessions with Gil Norton took place at the famous Cologne studio of German producer Conny Plank, but both band and label were unhappy with the results and these recordings were shelved. They began re-recording material from the Cologne sessions with Laurie Latham in Brussels, but the sessions were grueling, with Latham spending up to a month on a single song, and tensions within the band were being inflamed by McCulloch's increasing alcohol use, and the star treatment he was being accorded. In September 2023, a four-date tour saw the group perform Ocean Rain in full in the UK. [45] Members [ edit ] Current [ edit ]

Two singles were released before the album's release. "Pictures on My Wall" (as "The Pictures on My Wall"), the band's first single, was released on 5 May 1979. The single version was recorded before de Freitas had joined the band, but the song was re-recorded for the album with de Freitas on drums. [17] The band's second single, "Rescue", released on 5 May 1980, became the band's first song to chart when it reached number 62 on the UK Singles Chart. [18] Echo & The Bunnymen's 'Bright And Beautiful' Pete De Freitas Remembered". Mojo. 28 May 2014 . Retrieved 15 February 2023.

By the time Echo & The Bunnymen released their debut album, the drum machine had been replaced by Pete de Freitas. Moody and mysterious, Crocodiles was produced by Bill Drummond (who was “almost a fifth member” of the band, according to Ian McCulloch) and Dave Balfe of The Teardrop Explodes, with Ian Broudie (later of The Lightning Seeds) assisting.Of course, it's not as straightforward as its two predecessors, 1980's Crocodiles and 1981's Heaven Up Here. The Bunnymen hit the ground running, and their debut album is a stunning statement of purpose, with McCulloch already in full dramatic swing and the band at their most straightforward-- any band that uses as much reverb as this one is hard to label "raw," but "Pride" and "Do It Clean" nonetheless hit hard, and "Rescue", with Sergeant's massive opening riff, manages to turn a chorus that should sound like a plea into a rallying cry. Heaven Up Here ranges more widely, and makes motions toward the slightly funkier band that turned up on Porcupine on the aptly titled "Show of Strength" and "With a Hip", while also stretching out their theatrical side on the slow-burning, flute-laden "All My Colours" (also frequently referred to as "Zimbo" for McCulloch's weird, droning nonsense refrain). Following the departure of McCulloch and the death of de Freitas, Sergeant and Pattinson assembled a new line-up for the sixth album, featuring ex-St Vitus Dance frontman Noel Burke. Proof, if it were needed, that Mac was indispensable. Children Of Nuggets : Original Artyfacts From The Second Psychedelic Era 1976-1996 V.A CD1 - CD2 (1) Rescue" (produced by Ian Broudie), the lead single from Crocodiles, reached No. 62 on the UK singles chart but the album (co-produced by manager Bill Drummond and his business partner David Balfe of The Teardrop Explodes) broke into the Top 20, reaching No. 17, and garnered wide critical acclaim. [18]

However, their plans were thrown into disarray when Pete de Freitas was killed in a motorcycle accident on 14 June 1989. [27] De Freitas was on his way to Liverpool from London to take part in the group's first rehearsal with Burke, when his Ducati motorbike collided with another vehicle on the A51 At Longdon Green in Staffordshire, killing him instantly. He was 27 years old and was survived by his widow and their infant daughter, who was born in 1988. a b Salewicz, Chris (22 November 1980). "Echo & The Bunnymen: Welcome To The Bunnyhouse". NME. ISSN 0028-6362. Endelman, Michael (5 March 2004). "Crocodiles". Entertainment Weekly. No.754 . Retrieved 5 May 2010.

Featuring a gobby frontman with the theatrical nous of Jim Morrison, a Frank Sinatra croon and Leonard Cohen’s melancholic sensibility, Echo & The Bunnymen forged grandiose soundscapes out of punk energy and pop poetry to leave an indelible mark on the 80s… Sergeant himself said: “We wanted classic sounds, sounds nobody else could get. I played guitar with a pair of scissors at one point, and I kind of banned cymbals.” If you’re looking for meaningful lyrics, disciplined poetic cadence, creative melodies, elaborate chord structures, skillful performances, and fine vocals, you should look elsewhere. McCulloch claimed Porcupine was “a classic autobiographical album, the most honest thing that I’d ever written or sung”.

Schofield, Deborah (29 July 2002). "20 years on, it's still a Womad world". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077 . Retrieved 15 February 2023. proved to be the turning point in the group's career. During their regular winter break, drummer Pete de Freitas had moved to America with a loose group of musical colleagues, friends and hangers-on dubbed The Sex Gods, but the other Bunnymen and his family later revealed that de Freitas was suffering from escalating mental health and drug problems, and following a New Year's Eve drug binge in New Orleans, de Freitas announced that he had quit the band. The Liverpool scene at the interface of the 70s and 80s was the proving ground for a trio of singers that are among the most mercurial ever to emerge from the Merseyside metropolis. Ian McCulloch, Julian Cope and Pete Wylie actually started out together as The Crucial Three in 1977, before Wylie quit (going on to The Mighty Wah!) and McCulloch and Cope went on to form A Shallow Madness, an early incarnation of The Teardrop Explodes.In November 1978, Echo & the Bunnymen made their debut at Liverpool's Eric's Club, [12] appearing as the opening act for The Teardrop Explodes. The band played one song, a 20-minute version of "Monkeys" which was entitled "I Bagsy Yours" at the time. [13] Meanwhile, McCulloch released his well-received debut solo album Candleland in September 1989, shortly after de Freitas' death. His follow-up solo album was Mysterio in 1992. Crocodiles is the closest that the Bunnymen ever came to a "conventional" post-punk record. In particular, whereas the album repeatedly hints at the Neo-psychedelic ambitions that would soon dominate the band's sound, most of the record is far less lush than its successors. This is most obvious in Will Sergeant's guitar playing, which is more angular and less atmospheric than on subsequent releases. Crocodiles also places a stronger emphasis on Les Pattinson's pulsing bass and features a relatively straightforward production. As for the vocals, Ian McCulloch's wavering baritone is immediately identifiable for anyone familiar with the band. The only peculiarity here is a handful of energetic vocal melodies where McCulloch employs an unusually "shouty", punkish style. All things considered, nothing on Crocodiles is atypical enough to confuse newcomers in search of something resembling Ocean Rain, but the album clearly dates itself to the earliest years of the post-punk revolution. Matrix / Runout (Side B runout, variant 6 ("E" in KODE is just 3 parallel lines across an "A")): W-3 KOD̸E 1 B-1 WITH FLOWERS A̶̷̲̅N̶̷̲̅D̶̷̲̅ IИ THEIR HAIR ARUN