COMPULSION LP (RSD 2015)

Factory Benelux presents a new studio album by cult Manchester postpunk group Crispy Ambulance, issued in a limited edition of 500 vinyl copies to mark Record Store Day 2015. In many respects Compulsion is the second album Crispy Ambulance might have recorded in 1982 after the release of The Plateau Phase, with six of the eight tracks written and performed live at that time. To these are now added Rain Without Clouds, an outtake from The Plateau Phase newly restored from the original multitrack masters, and WMTP.2 with added synth lines by producer-cum fifth member Graham Massey, of 808 State and Biting Tongues. Almost uniquely, Crispy Ambulance has retained the same line-up since the group was originally founded in 1978: Alan Hempsall (vocals, keyboards), Gary Madeley (drums), Robert Davenport (guitars), Keith Darbyshire (bass). šThere™s a sense of feeling compelled by irresistible forces,› explains Alan Hempsall. šCompulsion is an apt way to describe our constant urge to go back and make music with people we've known since childhood. While the world may have changed, our music continues to be the product of the same influences - the passing of time, the changing of the seasons, the content of our sleeping dreams, and the existence of space.› Cover art by Peter Staessens. The package also features a free digital download of the album. Praise for The Plateau Phase: "One of the best albums Britain's second city has unleashed" (Q, 03/2006); šPerfect, wonderful and with a compelling gravitational pull› (Record Collector, 03/2013); "17 years on The Plateau Phase sounds like what it probably always was: urgent, postmodernist psychedelia with less debt to Joy Division™s music than to the universal abstract existential tension that comes with being young" (Uncut, 12/1999); "Cold and ferocious, but with enough inventive melody to lighten the black abyss of the overall mood" (Les Inrockuptibles, 02/2012); "An enthralling glimpse at a moment in musical history when the DIY ethos of punk gradually gave way to experiments with electronics and song structures" (NME, 01/2000); "Mixes driving rock, gritty new wave and odd atmospheric stuff" (Option, 1990) Tracklisting: A1. Rainforest Ritual A2. Say Shake A3. Nightfall Ends the Ceasefire A4. At the Sounding of the Klaxon B1. WMTP.2 B2. Rain Without Clouds B3. Lucifer Rising B4. Open, Gates of Fire