Beyond the Tracks 17th September 2017

A false ending! We'd spent so much of 2017 believing that this was going to be the final show of the year, and of the In Dream campaign, and then the call of a charitable cause saved us from early Editors departure. This was a gig that the band actually had a hand in constructing, bringing in eardrum wreckers the Mary Chain and Slowdive as dance partners. Given that it took place in Birmingham meant it was gifted a hometown edge, and so it's an event that demanded some kind of documentation. Since it happened, however, there had been an ominous scarcity of material that suggested it would become "one that got away" in terms of archiving.

And then GaryUK reappeared.

I got an email from our favourite boy at the barrier and it just so happens that he recorded the entire show, and would I like it for the blog? It's a question that obviously needed some serious thought and consideration, so I took the 2.6 seconds required and then answered in the affirmative. Once again, thanks to you Gary for saving another Editors moment from the "missed opportunities" folder. We really appreciate it ;)

There is some melancholia hanging over this event, however, because if there was going to be an onstage collaboration involving Editors and La Goswell then it would have happened here. I don't know any of the players involved, and there were obviously reasons whey it didn't came to pass, but the thought of her onstage performing The Law or Ocean of Night with Mr Smith is an image of something-that-never-was which will eat at my fanbrain for the rest of my days.

So close.

I suppose we shouldn't write it off and as an impossibility, but it really seemed like the stars were in alignment and the gods of perfect situations were smiling at Beyond the Tracks. The door was open but nobody wanted to step through it. Damn.

The setlist has been tried and tested on the festival campaign...that is until you get to the encore. Bullets and Open Your Arms hadn't been in the running order for some time, and as much as they claim to avoid nostalgia while they're still making new music, the surroundings and the sense of occasion must have registered with them just a little. After all, when this show was planned it was going to be their swansong for the In Dream cycle. But then Oxfam came a-calling and that's another story entirely...

Enjoy the music ;)

stream it here

MP3s
Cold - download here
Sugar - download here
The Racing Rats - download here
Blood - download here
All Sparks - download here
Hallelujah (So Low) - download here
Eat Raw Meat = Blood Drool - download here
Magazine - download here
An End Has a Start - download here
Smokers - download here
The Pulse - download here
Ocean of Night - download here
A Ton of Love - download here
Marching Orders - download here
Encore Break - download here
Tom Talks - download here
Open Your Arms - download here
Bullets - download here
Munich - download here
Papillon - download here

All in a zip - download here 

Bonus Material - Open Your Arms

Shot from the barrier and donated to the Archive by Kam and Sam, here's the band playing an old, old song called Open Your Arms. Thanks again to you both for sharing.

stream it here

brought to you with lots and lots of lemming-love :) x

Music for Life 18th September 2017

  **UPDATE 16th September 2020 - Video has been nuked by Ancienne Belgique who threatened the Archive's YouTube profile with a copyright strike if I didn't remove it. Sorry everybody. You can still download a copy for yourself but the streaming version is gone.

 

Music For Life is a concert that will be remembered as a celebration of Editors' music and their Special Relationship with a certain nationality, as well as raising money for a good cause. It was also as the night that Mr Smith somehow managed to escape breaking a limb or dislocating a shoulder onstage. Damn that piano stool.

This was the final show of 2017 and they decided to do it in the country that probably loves them more than any other in the world. It's a big claim, I know. But it's apparent every time they play over there. Belgium really gets Editors, and it always has. Luckily for us,  we had a small number of the faithful who managed to text lucky, snag tickets and are in attendance as I typed this originally. Congratulations to you all, I hope you had an amazing night out.

A word of warning; the live audio broadcast below courtesy of Studio Brussel contains the full set as it aired. I was going to remove all the DJ chatter and station idents that they drop in to deter bootleggers, but it really doesn't interfere with the music which is all I care about. They're actually strangely respectful and don't end up talking over anything, which is very unusual. Studio Brussel are cool like that. Plus, there's just something more authentic about hearing it the same way that everyone else did on the night.

The setlist is the one that they've been sharpening up throughout the festival mini-campaign, and luckily for us has within it all four of the new tracks Cold, Hallelujah (So Low), Magazine and The Pulse. There's a sprinkling of older numbers in there too, which shows that they haven't entirely turned their backs on the formative years just yet.

I'm noticing as I'm listening to this is that the guitars are louder than usual, and they're feeding back. It happens most prominently at the end of Magazine and after the handclaps during Hallelujah (So Low) in the same way it did at Kendal Calling and it infuses everything with that sloppy, controlled aggression. I love it. The vocal effects on that track are also more pronounced during the chorus.

Once again, the crowd were what really made this show everything it was. The fact that most of them had to make a concerted effort to be in the building definitely helped, and produced a heightened level of attentiveness. The handclaps during ERM=BD, The Pulse and Smokers, and the way they all keep time during the Ocean of Night clapping where other audiences have failed.  The way someone shouts "Magazine! Yes!" as the first notes of that song start, and then they all go deathly quiet as Tom's vocals come in. A truly switched-on bunch of cats.  Enjoy the music ;)

The Setlist
Cold
Sugar
Racing Rats
Blood
All Sparks
Hallelujah (So Low)
ERM=BD 
Magazine
An End Has a Start
Smokers
The Pulse 
Ocean of Night  
A Ton of Love
Marching Orders 
Papillon

Video
Nuked on youtube, available to download here

Studio Brussel audio broadcast
stream it here 

MP3s
By popular demand, here's some single mp3s taken from the video soundtrack, meaning they don't have the voice-overs that Studio Brussel put on their radio broadcast. 

Cold (with intro) - download here
Sugar - download here
Racing Rats - download here
Blood - download here
All Sparks - download here
Hallelujah (So Low) - download here
ERM=BD - download here
Magazine - download here
An End Has a Start - download here
Smokers - download here
The Pulse - download here
Ocean of Night - download here  
A Ton of Love - download here
Marching Orders - download here
Papillon - download here

Bonus Materials
Up first is Editors being interviewed by StuBru as part of the big reveal of just how much money they helped to raise in aid of Music for Life.  I've left the entire video intact as it aired during the live Facebook broadcast, which means you get to hear them setting everything up in the background and the little bits and pieces after they're done. 

There's nothing more awkward than seeing all five members of the group all squashed into one small area, for an interview. What doesn't help to ease the proximity tension is that one person in the group is misbehaving. Keep your eye on King Leetch at the start of the video, as he does everything in his power to get Elliott to break his composure. Arm around the shoulder, even stroking his ear at one point and all with a knowing grin. He's no stranger to this kind of thing, as witnessed in his subtle harassment of Ed during the Play to Stop concert in 2009. For shame, sir! 

Well done to everyone who texted and took part, good job ;)

stream it here 

Next is a tiny clip of Mr Smith thanking all you generous folks who donated in total a very impressive €124,309 to Oxfam in the hopes of catching them live tonight at Ancienne Belgique. Editors fans may be glum but they have a wonderful sense of compassion. A glum sense of compassion. Compassion with a world-weary sigh etc etc. 

stream it here 

Oh Russell. 

Here's a short film by Studio Brussel that follows fans as they attend the show, presented in the language of its country of origin.

stream it here 

This is an item broadcast on the Belgian VRT news channel covering Editors' involvement in Music for Life, many thanks to Hannah at the band's online forum for the assistance in getting this one.

stream it here 

Here's a short radio interview between Tom and Studio Brussel about taking part in Music for Life.

stream it here 

Originally shared by Tom vds, here's a different vantage point of Mr Smith hitting the deck in spectacular fashion at Ancienne Belgique. If there was any doubt about the severity of the incident, this should clear it up because it's only from watching it that you really get a sense of just how bad this was.

It's a move he's executed successfully so many times; climbing on the piano and standing on top but for whatever reason it didn't work out this time around. He slips, twists and effectively takes all his body weight on his left arm when he lands on the stage. Luckily, Mr Smith is slight of frame and so there wasn't a whole lot of mass to deal with but this can officially be classed as a lucky escape. He's fortunate that he didn't break a wrist or his arm in the process because it's a pretty nasty fall. From the perspective of one human seeing another so obviously suffering, it's actually difficult to watch. Especially the seconds that follow him landing where he's essentially crawling around the stage in agony, I suspect with a mixture of "Oh shit, that really hurts" and "I can't believe that just happened" running through his mind. Thank goodness for adrenaline and shock because that's probably what got him through Papillon.

stream it here or download here

Tom and Russell's Music for Life Ident
Prior to the gig, King Leetch and Mr Smith did a small ident to make people aware of it. Check it out ;)

stream it here 

And if you want some cruel irony, then Russell predicted this 11 years go when he introduced Tom on Japanese TV:-

Oddity #10 - Japanese Introductions

brought to you with lots and lots of lemming-love :) x

Live Teaser by Rahi Rezvani September 18th 2017

The band had hinted that some big announcements were coming in March of next year, it looks like they're going to start messing with our heads even earlier. This short film of the band performing live captured by Mr Rahi Rezvani, and with a soundtrack of what appears to be a recorded take of Hallelujah (So Low), arrived online this morning. If you thought that the song sounded big when they played at recent shows, something very peculiar has happened. The general rule in the past has been that Editors' music always seem bigger and more expansive when you hear it live. Weirdly, this turns that theory on its head. It's sounding massive. Could this be the first time in the band's history that the ideas captured  in the studio have more weight and depth than their live cousins?

There's an indication that there will be some live shows in March and April of next year, which means that even as the curtain falls on the campaign for In Dream tonight in their final gig of the year, they're already planning way in advance for the next promotional cycle. Hopefully, this may not be the lengthy disappearing act that we all feared. Now there's just the small matter of that standalone release that our insider source hinted at (cough)EdiBow(cough). Fun times to be a fan, and to everyone attending the AB gig tonight, have an amazing time and bring back stories for the rest of us.

stream it here

brought to you with lots and lots of lemming-love :) x

Oddity #24 - The Glitches

This is an oddity but also an extreme rarity, one that I'm ecstatic to be able to share because I know that a lot of you will not have seen this. Those who have probably won't have viewed it in this format. During the latter part of 2009, there was a transitional period that marked the official end of the AEHAS campaign and the beginning of the ITLAOTE push. Part of that process was an update of the band's official website, and it happened in two distinct but very weird stages. This is how it looked before the changes, with the AEHAS style artwork in the background:-

Once the changeover began, the first thing that happened was a completely blank front page, offering you only two options in a sharp contrast to the multitude of options on the page prior to this. You could continue to the main site or you could visit the forum, and this black screen of death looked like this:-

Here's where things got strange. There was a small numbered display embedded in the page that seemed to be counting down towards something. But what? Conspiracy theories abounded. Was this a lyrical reference to Escape the Nest? If so, why? That was from E2 and now it was 2009 and almost time for the next record, so what was the relevance? It was attention grabbing in the worst possible way for those of us who have given over large parts of our lives/souls/brain function to this band, like catnip dangled in front of an army of gloomy cats, who now began to obsess. Among every proposition and possible explanation put forward, only one question remained; What will happen when the clock reaches zero? 

While the clock ticked a number of video images, or "glitches" according the the tags that were already on them when I grabbed them from the site,  flashed up at random intervals. It was frustrating because you couldn't pause it and really scrutinize what you were seeing. It was all very mysterious, in a very arty way. 

The thing about successfully grabbing all of this for future enjoyment was that I had to rip every tiny video file from the official site while they played. It wasn't a cohesive, single bit of film and because of the disordered way in which they appeared, different clips on different days, it took a while to get them all and sort out the duplicates. In the end, there were about 30 puzzle pieces in total. 

These snippets ranged in length from around 6 seconds to 44 seconds, but for this post I've combined them all into a single video so you can watch them all in one sitting. The effect is even more creepy than they were originally. If you've ever seen the Japanese horror movie Ringu (which was later ruined/remade into The Ring by Hollywood), the cursed video tape that you die 7 days after watching has a similar vibe. For a band that was already regularly swatting away accusations of inherent darkness in their music and of them being sad souls all day long, this didn't help. However, I really like the way it looks and I think it captures some of the essence of what makes ITLAOTE so effective.  It's like they picked out the most unsettling musical moments from the E3 sessions and made a short film about them to build anticipation for the new record's release. It didn't tell you a whole lot but it does manage to put you on edge. Also, E3 was released in October of 2009 and it's so appropriate because of the coldness that seems to be woven into every note on that record. This video takes that audio chill and makes it into something you can see.

I won't go into any great detail about that you'll see and hear, because it's a lot more fun to just watch it and use the pause button to pick out the finer points, and to be able to replay it as much as you need to immerse yourself in it fully. 

If you're wondering about the clock on the front page of the official site, it did eventually reach zero. Large numbers of fans from the official forum mobilised on the day it was due to run out, gathering around to tune in for the big reveal. Right up until those last few seconds we were all still theorising about what could happen when we reached the finish line, counting aloud from 10 down to 1 and then...and then...

Another clock appeared and started counting down all over again. We got played by our favourite band. 

Later, after the second clock ran out and we all gathered around with the uneasy feeling that another one was about to start up again from scratch, the black screen of death vanished and the official site changed its appearance to look like this:-

So here it is, just under 5 minutes of spooky Editors flashbacks from the In This Light and on This Evening sessions which ushered in a brand new chapter in the band's history.

stream it here

Bonus Material - No Sound But the Wind (glitch)

This is an additional glitch that wasn't part of the original collection on the website, but it fits together with the rest perfectly. It starts with a section of the full electric version of No Sound But The Wind, but it's a little odd. Firstly, there are pieces of the Munich video playing. Secondly, it starts off sounding like the recording of NSBTW but then all the music fades out leaving leaving no sound...but the Tom, before going completely silent and stopping. No happy ending or signing off with a smile. A fitting conclusion to the whole glitches episode. Enjoy ;)

stream it here

And don't forget, you can catch up with other Editors Oddities using this link:-

Editors Oddities

brought to you with lots and lots of lemming-love :) x

Editors Instagram - August 2017

One of the first orders of business last month was some more philanthropy in the form Editors putting their names on the BeeLove poster, as part of the Forever Manchester and the We Love Manchester Emergency Fund appeal. As you may recall, this was set in motion by the suicide bomb attack at the Ariana Grande concert on the 22nd May 2017. The idea was that bands would sign their names on a poster created by artist Amy Coney, depicting the Manchester worker bee logo, and it would then be auctioned off to raise funds. In the end, it brought in just over £7,000. Great work, Amy. Congratulations ;)

August was the penultimate month in the 2017 festival campaign, which saw them playing four dates in a week and taking in Romania, Belgium, The Netherlands and Ukraine. Pukkelpop and Lowlands were included in that number and they gave, in my opinion, two of the best shows of the entire run on those nights (and on those evenings). There seems to be a new found vigour in all 5 Editors that's elevating the music to a different standard than the one they set in May, when all of this started on a revolving stage at Primo Maggio. 

The horrible, horrible irony of that fact is that once they do Beyond the Tracks they'll be retreating back into the studio to complete E6, just as their ability to deliver their songs consistently and with maximum emotion seems to be reaching its zenith. Build, build, build and then...gone. Maybe there's some terribly deep existential symbolism buried in there somewhere, but I doubt it. 

Still, the adage of leaving them wanting more could be true; a little absence from the stage before they begin the next touring cycle, and some time to actually live as civilians again, will make the collective heart grow fonder but also give them time to recuperate. I don't think any of us want a return to the dark days of 2015 where Mr Smith was too sick to travel, let alone take care of his crooning obligations.

In addition to his fantastic airport snapshots, Mr Lockey has increased the number of short videos he's been sharing on his travels. They're these little vistas of people in the streets of different cities, taken as he's passing through. It's a kind of vehicular voyeurism that reminds me of the Meeting People is Easy video by Radiohead, in the way it looks and the dreamy, frosty detachment it carries. The world kept at a safe distance behind glass. He has this knack for being in the right place at the right time to capture small moments of interest. There's a video filmed in Ukraine outside a shop front, for example, and just as the van he's in pulls away these two soldiers walk in and out of frame. All the clips he shot and shared during August are included in the zip.

If you want weirdness and drama then August possessed some of that. There were high hopes that the set from Summer Well would be made available, as had been the case with some other bands, but in the end we only got video footage of the first three tracks. Ordinarily that would still be a cause for celebration, but there was a catch. The frame rate at their end was totally out, which meant that the picture jerked and shuddered making it a little difficult to watch and enjoy. The sound was OK, however, and if you want to check it out then you can grab an MP3 using this link.

Then, there was the Virgin Radio story that offered miscommunication and disappointment by the barrel. It's a bit of a tale to tell but I've laid everything out in that post. If I'm guessing correctly then the interview with Tom should surface as we get closer to the Beyond the Tracks festival, given that it the subject matter is partially concerned with that show. It was a huge let-down but if it's atonement that Virgin Radio are after, a brand new Editors session will certainly go a long way to achieving it. 

The only two outstanding matters this month were the continued confinement of Dream Dark as Your Heaven (booooo!), and the ongoing possibility of the mystery track release as hinted at by EdiBow. 

Finally, how would you like to see Mr Smith getting his plums out and playing with them on camera? I could have handed this over to the tabloids anonymously, but after 11 years of shameless/shameful obsessing I still have a modicum of respect and fondness for the band. But if I'm being honest then Editors are most likely finished after this, and Tom will go blind/develop hairy palms if he continues this sort of behaviour. Social media is forever, and it's all in the zip...

download here or download here

And if you want to view Editors' previous adventures on the interwebs, check out the links below:-

January 2017 - download here

February 2017 - download here

March 2017 - download here

April 2017 - download here

May 2017 - download here
June 2017 - download here
July 2017 - download here
August 2017 - download here
September 2017 - download here
October 2017 - download here
November 2017 - download here

Complete 2015 Collection

download here

Complete 2016 collection

download here

brought to you with lots and lots of lemming-love :) x