Sealed LP: Comsat Angels: Chasing Shadows

Comsat Angels: Chasing Shadows FACTORY SEALED LP Format: Sealed LP Record Company/Release Number: Island: 7 90545-1 Bar Code: 075679054517 Original release date: 1987 Country: U.S.A. Condition of the cover: Mint Condition of the record: Sealed - Assumed Mint Shipping Weight: 1 pounds, 0 ounces Inventory number: 208494 Notes: - - - Please contact me if you have any difficulty viewing the photos. Songs: The Thought That Counts The Cutting Edge Under the Influence Carried Away You'll Never Know Lost Continent Flying Dreams Pray for Rain Credits: Kevin Bacon: Bass Stephen Fellows: Guitar, Vocals Mik Glaisher: Drums Kevin Moloney: Producer Robert Palmer: Vocals Andy Peake: Keyboards Album Review: Reviewby Less concerned with attaining hits, Chasing Shadows is a return to form and an attempt to just make a good record. It's also the result of an association with Robert Palmer, a fan who executive produced the record. Despite dated production and material that doesn't match the band's first three records, the members refer to it as their fourth record. (So they essentially disown both Land and 7 Day Weekend.) That's because there's focus on the music, not allowing any room for outside concerns. Since the late-'80s production values sounded dated within a few years of release, the songs that hold up best are the ones with the most basic arrangements. "The Cutting Edge," "Carried Away," and "Pray for Rain" offer the best moments, and they're also the most quiet and most simplistic. Andy Peake plays plaintive piano for most of the record, instead of his usual synth stylings and frosty atmospherics. Other songs like the driving opener "The Thing That Counts" and "Under the Influence" are almost heavy, probably their closest to flat-out rock to date. One thing that Chasing Shadows suffers from is an almost cold, clinical feel. Even with the band's most dejected early material, there was a sense of warmth that is missing on approximately half of the record. As a benefit, it does sound much more like the Comsat Angels than 7 Day Weekend Biography: Comsat Angels biography by Andy Kellman, All Music Guide Erroneously regarded as a synth pop band -- and, every now and then, as a band that peaked with a song placed in a scene of Real Genius -- the Comsat Angels were one of the finest bands of the post-punk/new wave era. Often as moody if less dramatic than Joy Division, their first and best albums -- 1980's Waiting for a Miracle, 1981's Sleep No More, and 1982's Fiction -- featured abstract pop songs with spare instrumentation, many of which were bleak and filled with some form of heartache. The albums were almost unrelentingly sullen, but they were always transfixing. The band then fell prey to various commercial pressures for several years. In the '90s they resurfaced with a pair of powerful albums that resembled logical extensions of their earliest work, and then they vanished again. After numerous incarnations and name changes, the Sheffield-based Radio Earth -- guitarist and vocalist Stephen Fellows, drummer Mik Glaisher, keyboardist Andy Peake, bassist Kevin Bacon -- found themselves opening for Pere Ubu in Newcastle. After the gig, the quartet realized that they had been blown off the stage and intimidated by the headliners' sense of focus and ability to confuse. Following a rethink, they came back as the less self-conscious Comsat Angels (the name referenced a short story by J.G. Ballard). They took a loan from Glaisher's father to record and release the Red Planet EP in 1979; BBC DJ John Peel, who was sent a copy, liked what he heard, requested a few more copies and booked the band for one of his famous Peel Sessions. An unintrusive deal with Polydor allowed the band to make three stunning albums and pay back Mr. Glaisher, but the label didn't know how to handle the band and the more influential music journalists shied away for whatever reason, though the coverage the band did receive tended to be glowing. Only "Independence Day," from the first album, managed to chart in... read more