Sulk

Product Information

MICHAEL DEMPSEY: I half-joined while I was in the Cure. The Cure were on the same label, Fiction, so we’d meet in the bar at Morgan Studios. I also remember meeting them up in Edinburgh, though I can’t see how. I remember meeting them in a bedsit, and sitting round a Dansette record player, with Chris Parry, the Cure’s manager. The Cure were there as well, Robert and Lol, and we were listening to the record the they made, Boys Keep Swinging. Straight away I was impressed. I’ve often struggled with the oft asked question about naming your top 10 albums of all time, as this can change by the day depending on my mood. However, on listening to this extraordinarily unique and arresting album time and again over the last few weeks, I decided that not only should this album always be in that top ten, but in fact, if I was to choose only one album that I had to listen to for the rest of my life, it would be hard to see past Sulk.

I would say that we were less careerist and didn’t fit. An awful lot of our songs were about not belonging. That New Romantic shit? We didn’t fit into that and we certainly didn’t fit into a highly polished ABC thing. In 2007, The Guardian’s Alex Petridis wrote of Sulk: “The album’s contents were spellbinding and mysterious, swathed in echo and electronic effects: tortured ballads; strange, skittering pop songs; a spellbinding funk version of “Gloomy Sunday,” the 1933 song that at one stage was fancifully alleged to have inspired hundreds of suicides, including that of its composer. His sons Callum and Hamish Rankine announced the 64-year-old’s death on Tuesday January 3. “He died peacefully at home shortly after spending Christmas with his family,” the family’s statement read. “He was a beautiful, kind and loving man who we will miss dearly.” Sulk is the second studio album by Scottish post-punk and pop band the Associates. It was released on 14 May 1982 on their own Associates imprint of Beggars Banquet Records for the UK and throughout the rest of Europe on WEA Records [2] [3] and in the US on 4 October by Sire Records.Strange obsession, what a strange obsession for this haunting record. Like two lovers (invariably male I think), "Party Fears Two" and "Club Country" are dancing eternally, holding each other into a damned dance throught labyrinths of sulphur and fetal death. Where did I dare to listened this? On a defiant stand near Hell, for sure. "Bapdelabap" is like a bat flight - any gothic band, shitty or not, is laughable near this: probably wins the price for the scariest moment in Pop music - even Peter Murphy has pissed off his trousers. It’s a flawed masterpiece. The flaws being Nude Spoons and Bap De La Bap, which we didn’t nail but we gave them our all. We wanted to stretch pop music as far as we could but still have fun doing it. As told to Charles Waring DEMPSEY: I never saw Bill and Alan disagree about doing anything. They had an instinctive understanding. Billy would hum whatever he wanted, and within a couple of seconds, Alan would be barking out the chords. The Associates are a band which was, and is, hard to define or pigeonhole, dipping a toe in post punk, experimenting with electronics and a variety of weird and wonderful instruments, some of their songs dripping with addictive pop hooks, while others verging on melancholic torch songs and the avant grade. The bands appeal stretched to a wide range of my peers in a variety of subcultures from my youth from punks to goths to pop music fans, their appeal was universal having created a band which intrigued and delighted in equal measure. LP, Album, Reissue , Blue; CD, Album, Reissue; 2×CD; CD, Single, Limited Edition, Promo; All Media, Deluxe Edition, Remastered

Divine Comedy recorded a version of "Party Fears Two" on their album Victory for the Comic Muse in 2006, Parlophone – 00946 365372 2 1 Alan Rankine, the Scottish musician and record producer best known as the keyboardist, guitarist and co-founder of influential post-punk outfit The Associates has died.Reynolds, Simon (2 April 2009). Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978–1984. Faber and Faber. ISBN 9780571252275 . Retrieved 15 December 2014. Waring, Charles (June 2016). "The Associates – The Affectionate Punch, Fourth Drawer Down, Sulk". Record Collector. No.454 . Retrieved 24 June 2017.