Tom appeared as a guest vocalist on Japanese Popstars' Joshua single in 2011, and this is a live performance of the track as part of the Channel 4 series "Sound of the Cities". It aired at the beginning of March that year and for whatever reason this take is a drastically shortened version of the studio recording. There's just under a minute of music missing, but given the rare nature of the clip it deserves to be shared anyway. Go listen to the full version because it's so good.
2011 was the quiet period just before the storm in terms of Editors' developmental path, being the year that the ITLAOTE campaign disbanded and when Mr Urbanowicz played his last ever gig as a band member. Given the sounds of the album they were promoting they were all still musically in that warm, electronica womb state so it makes absolute sense that Tom appears on this track. Looking back not it has the feel of some of the material on In Dream, where they reintroduced the machines again after hitting the guitars on TWOYL. It affirms that Tom has the kind of voice that, given the right song, can glide smoothly across more than one style of music.
If you needed reminding of just how small the musical world Editors live in really is then here's some trivia that will help. The next single by Japanese Popstars after Joshua was called Take Forever, and featured another vocalist with the surname Smith, Robert from The Cure. Why is that significant? Editors covered Lullaby by that band in September of 2007 as part of Radio 1's 40th anniversary celebrations.
Japanese Popstars remixed Papillon, and they've also reworked Peace by Depeche Mode. Why is that significant? The producer Flood worked with Depeche Mode and also on ITLAOTE. There's just so little separation...
Enjoy the music ;)
Enjoy the music ;)
brought to you with lots and lots of lemming-love :) x
