Lament (album)

Lament
Ultravox studio album
Publication (s)	April 19, 1984
Label (s)	Chrysalis Records
Format (s)	CD, LP
Genre (s)	Rock , new wave , synth-pop
Title (number)	8th
running time	37:38
occupation	Vocals / guitar / keyboard: Midge Ure Bass / Keyboard: Chris Cross Drums / Percussion: Warren Cann Keyboard / violin: Billy Currie
production	Ultravox
Studio (s)	Musicfest Studio, London
chronology Quartet (1982) Lament U-Vox (1986)
Single releases January 26, 1984 One small day May 4th 1984 Dancing with Tears in My Eyes June 21, 1984 Lament September 1984 Heart of the Country

Lament (dt. Lament ) is the seventh album of the British band Ultravox . It was released on April 19, 1984 by Chrysalis Records and is assigned to the New Wave genre. It also marks the last collaboration between the four band members for a period of 25 years. The drummer Warren Cann was replaced by Mark Brzezicki before the recording of the follow-up album U-Vox . It wasn't until 2009 that the original line-up for the comeback tour Return to Eden came together and later produced the studio album Brilliant .

A double album of the same name was released on September 4, 2009 as a Remastered Definitive Edition . In addition to a remastered version of the original album on the first CD, it contains a second CD with some B-sides of the single releases, live recordings and previously unreleased songs.

History of origin

After working with the successful British producer George Martin for the previous album Quartet , the band decided to produce Lament on their own. The album was recorded at Midge Ures Musicfest Studio in Chiswick , London , and then mixed at Mayfair Studios . By using their own private recording studio, the musicians had more freedom in composing. Chris Cross and Ure also traveled by caravan to the Scottish island of Lewis and Harris in the Outer Hebrides to get inspiration for the lyrics, among other things.

Cover design

The Callanish Stones can be seen both on the album cover and in the music video for the single One Small Day .

As with Quartet , Peter Saville took on the artistic design. Initially, Ure and Cross insisted on a completely black cover, as published by the rock group Spın̈al Tap for their album This Is Spinal Tap a few months later, but were changed by their manager Chris Morrison. The final design contained a matt black background with small, regularly arranged black, glossy squares that only became visible when the light fell. In the upper right corner was the word Lament and below it was a photo of the Standing Stones of Callanish . The musicians had visited the stone formation , which dates back to the megalithic culture, on their trip to the northern island region of Lewis . Because of the high unit costs of over one British pound, the band initially only had a comparatively small edition of 10,000 copies made. After these were quickly sold out due to the chart success, a cheaper follow-up series was produced in a less sophisticated design.

instrumentation

The MIDI technology introduced in 1983 was first used in the production of an Ultravox album. The band replaced some of the previously used instruments with those with a MIDI interface. Digital synthesizers were programmed with vocal samples that can be heard on the title track Lament (Palm PPG Wave 2.2) and on White China ( Yamaha GS-1 ). A string quartet is also represented in Heart of the Country . The solo in the middle of the song was played by Billy Currie on a Violectra made by the American manufacturer Barcus-Berry . For the first time in all songs the drums were replaced by drum computers.

Mae McKenna, sister of drummer Ted McKenna ( Rory Gallagher , Michael Schenker Group ), provided background vocals in Gaelic for Man of Two Worlds . Debi Doss, previously singer with The Buggles in video Killed the Radio Star , was one of the two supporting voices in A Friend I Call Desire alongside Shirley Roden .

Track list

1. White China - 3:53
2. One Small Day - 4:33
3. Dancing with Tears in My Eyes - 4:40
4. Lament - 4:41
5. Man of Two Worlds - 4:28
6. Heart of the Country - 5:06
7. When the Time Comes - 4:57
8. A Friend I Call Desire - 5:11

The Remastered Definitive Edition contains on the second CD:

1. One Small Day (Special Remix) - 7:51
2. Easterly - 3:48
3. Lament (Extended Mix) - 8:02
4. One Small Day (Special Remix Extra) - 8:31
5. Dancing with Tears in My Eyes (Special Remix) - 10:02
6. Building - 3:11
7. White China (Special Mix) - 8:23
8. Heart of the Country (instrumental) - 4:24
9. One Small Day (Final Mix) - 7:45
10. A Friend I Call Desire (Work in Progress Mix) - 5:39
11. Lament (Work in Progress Mix) - 4:53

In addition, four titles are available for download from online providers:

1. Loves Great Adventure (Extended Version) - 5:40
2. White China (Recorded Live at Hammersmith Odeon, June 1984) - 3:46
3. Man of Two Worlds (instrumental) - 4:31
4. Heart of the Country (Special Remix) - 11:05

Publications and chart successes

Chart positions Explanation of the data

Albums

Lament   DE 25th 04/23/1984 (21 weeks)   UK 8th 04/14/1984 (26 weeks)   US 115 05/19/1984 (9 weeks)

Singles

One small day   UK 27 02/11/1984 (6 weeks) Dancing with Tears in My Eyes   DE 7th 07/02/1984 (16 weeks)   CH 16 07/15/1984 (7 weeks)   UK 3 05/19/1984 (13 weeks) Lament   UK 22nd 07/07/1984 (8 weeks)

The album reached number eight in the UK, number 25 in Germany and number 115 in the US album charts. It received gold status in Great Britain on June 8, 1984 for more than 100,000 records sold.

A total of four singles were released from the album: One Small Day on January 26, 1984 (before the album was released), Dancing with Tears in My Eyes on May 4, 1984, Lament on June 21, 1984 (in Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand ) and Heart of the Country in September 1984 (in Germany and France). Dancing with Tears in My Eyes was by far the most successful release. With position seven it achieved the best chart position of all Ultravox singles in Germany and with position three the second best result after Vienna in the British single charts. The song became a number one hit in Belgium .

The music videos for the three singles released in the UK were directed by Midge Ure and Chris Cross after they had already written the script. In Dancing With Tears in My Eyes , a serious accident in a nuclear power plant is portrayed from the personal perspective of a couple. The work is one of the most famous videos of the 1980s. The setting for One Small Day was The Standing Stones of Callanish, shown on the album cover . A love story was staged for Lament together with four female models . While filming on the Scottish island of Skye , Ure met his future first wife Annabel Giles.

tour

Ultravox with Midge Ure at the Bristol Hippodrome, May 24, 1984

A week after the album was released, the Set Movements World Tour began in Spain. Ten stops in Germany in May 1984 and further appearances in Great Britain and other European countries followed, before the tour ended with a final concert in the United States. Danny Mitchell and Colin King supported the band as messengers again with the instrumentation and the backing vocals . The sound check before each concert took several hours. A total of 26 individual input signals were passed to the PA system .

reception

Despite a stylistic development compared to the previous album, the press spoke of the well-known "English cathedral sound" and "well-known empty phrases". Dave Thompson from Allmusic rates the album with 4 out of 5 points and certifies the band, a "perfect musical legacy, lavish in musical terms and bleak in thematic terms". The "gloomy state of mind" expresses itself both in human terms in "sleepy melancholy" and "emotional pain" ( Lament , One Small Day , A Friend I Call Desire ) and in the form of politically colored texts that conjure up the "global dangers of the modern world" ( White China , Heart of the Country , Dancing with Tears in My Eyes ).

literature

• Christian Graf and Burghard Rausch: Rock Music Lexicon . Europe / Vol. 2, Lake Zombies. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag , Frankfurt am Main 1996, ISBN 3-596-12388-7 (pp. 751-1515).
• Robin Eggar: Midge Ure, If I Was… The Autobiography . Virgin Books, 2005, ISBN 0-7535-1077-4 (British English, pp. 96, 118-119, 123-124, 127).

Web links

• Lament at Allmusic (English)
• Lament lyrics in LyricWiki
• Booklet of the Remastered Definitive Edition by Lament (PDF file; 20.3 MB)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} cf. Eggar, p. 118
2. ↑ ^{a b} cf. Eggar, p. 123
3. ↑ Billy Currie Viola's Violins Synths. In: BillyCurrie.com. Retrieved April 9, 2012 . 
4. ↑ charts.de: Ultravox - Lament in the German album charts
5. ↑ officialcharts.com: Ultravox - Lament in the British album charts
6. ↑ allmusic.com: Ultravox - Lament in the US album charts
7. ↑ officialcharts.com: Ultravox - One Small Day in the UK single charts
8. ↑ charts.de: Ultravox - Dancing with Tears in My Eyes in the German single charts
9. ↑ hitparade.ch: Ultravox - Dancing with Tears in My Eyes in the Swiss hit parade
10. ↑ officialcharts.com: Ultravox - Dancing with Tears in My Eyes in the UK single charts
11. ↑ officialcharts.com: Ultravox - Lament in the British single charts
12. ↑ Certified Awards Search. In: BPI.co.uk. Retrieved September 14, 2014 . 
13. ↑ Sam Maynard: Ultravox and the Stones. (No longer available online.) In: Hebrides.com. August 3, 2009, archived from the original on November 15, 2010 ; accessed on April 9, 2012 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
14. ↑ See Eggar, p. 96
15. ↑ Gilles Coudert: Ultravox 1984 Setup jpg. In: MatrixSynth.com. January 12, 2008, accessed April 9, 2012 . 
16. ^ Süddeutsche Zeitung , quoted from Graf, Rausch, pp. 1375–1376
17. ↑ See Graf, Rausch, p. 777