The Beloved

The Beloved
General information
origin	Cambridge , UK
Genre (s)	Psychedelic rock , electronica , pop
founding	1984
resolution	1997
Founding members
Vocals , electric guitar	Jon Marsh
Drums	Guy Gausden (until 1988)
Electric bass	Tim Harvard (until 1988)
Electric guitar, keyboard	Steve Waddington (until 1991)
Last occupation
Electric guitar, vocals, keyboard	Jon Marsh
Singing (from 1991)	Helena Marsh

The Beloved was a British music group that emerged in 1984 from the previous band Journey Through, which was founded by two dropouts from the band Twelfth of August, but in the end only existed as a spouse duo.

Band history

Jon Marsh had been the drummer with Twelfth of August since 1982 . In 1983 he placed an advertisement in which he announced the formation of a band called The Beloved for 1986, for which he was looking for comrades-in-arms who should be at an exactly specified place at an exact time in that future year. In the meantime, he brought an acquaintance from the University of Cambridge to Twelfth of August as a guitarist , namely the math student Steve Waddington, who worked as a postman. Marsh, Waddington and the bassist Tim Harvard, who was also recruited from the student body, were ultimately the founding members of a band that was initially called Journey Through. When the drummer Guy Gausden joined in November 1984 and Marsh switched to vocals and guitar, the idea of ​​the name “The Beloved” was used.

The radio presenter John Peel , known for his promotion of newcomers , who had heard a recording of their pop song A Hundred Words , invited the band to his show twice. The first “ peel session ” took place in January 1985, the second in October 1985. Now there was an increased demand for the band. The quartet founded their own record label under the name Flim Flam and released a few singles by 1987, which were able to place in the UK independent charts , but did not reach the official British single charts . The Beloved achieved a respectable success with the 1987 album Where It Is , which led to a record deal with WEA Records . Around this time the band changed their musical direction, away from the psychedelic -tinged pop , towards a mix of pop music and dance along the lines of bands like New Order . In 1987, the song Forever Dancing was used in the movie Sammy and Rosie do it , whereupon the actual single B-side was simply declared the second A-side (from Surprise Me ). In February 1988 The Beloved completed a tour of France and Switzerland. During this phase of expanding international popularity, Harvard and Gausden left The Beloved and the two remaining members Jon Marsh and Steve Waddington continued the band as a duo. Both now showed a strong tendency towards the rave movement. They replaced the rhythm section with electronic aids. Marsh also shifted his instrumental contribution from the guitar to the keyboard. The singles Loving Feeling (1988) and Your Love Takes Me Higher (1989), which also failed to reach the singles charts, were released by WEA . The commercial breakthrough only came with The Sun Rising at number 26 in the charts at the end of 1989. Marsh admitted that without the use of the drug ecstasy he would not have gotten the flair that the song exudes. The following single Hello reached number 19 on the charts and The Beloved was traded as the successor to the Pet Shop Boys . The album Happiness was released on February 16, 1990 . It includes a remix of Your Love Takes Me Higher , which became the band's third single hit.

For Waddington, the amount of ambient was not high enough, so it happened to him that Steve Hillage was looking for colleagues for his System 7 project in 1991 , whereupon he joined Hillage and turned his back on Marsh. Marsh had married in the meantime. He had met his wife Helena in a club in the London borough of Vauxhall . The fashion house employee was integrated into Marsh's musical work after Waddington's departure, which resulted in a more poppy orientation, which can be heard on the album Conscience . It was released on February 8, 1993 and contains the pre-released January 11 single, Sweet Harmony , which became a hit. The top ten placement of Sweet Harmony and the album, which penetrated the top of the charts in the wake of this success, meant the career highlight , because with the following three single releases, the success subsided and The Beloved withdrew from the public for around three years . The couple first plunged into the techno underground in the USA.

Although the band made a comeback in 1996 with the successor X and three singles , the stylistic direction of the group was no longer up to date. In addition, Jon Marsh had discovered DJing for himself and ended his career as The Beloved in 1997. His new DJ proved to be more stable, and it was only from the year 2000 that he felt the desire to publish songs under his band name again.

style

Originally founded as a psychedelic pop band, the group turned to electronic music in the late 1980s under the influence of the British rave scene , incorporated commercial pop music after Helena Marsh's entry, and after an inspirational overseas trip, more elements of the Allow techno .

Diedrich Diederichsen wrote in his Where-It-Is review for Spex : “[E] in a touching, sensitive-malnourished bunch who [...] is more interested in atmosphere than in precise, good songwriting that can be written down in notes [...] floats in the greatest danger of idealistic blackout, but has conjured up a nice plate. […] [T] he eternally floating, open song structure is not closed with a wall-of-sound […], but simply released […]. "

The Rough Guide to Rock says about Happiness , with its mix of pop and dance it was a “feel-good sound track” of the early 1990s. Andre Luth stated in the Musikexpress that the album was "more on the pop side of the dance floor".

Despite the buyer's interest, because of its simple pop character, the Encyclopedia of Popular Music describes the album Conscience as "inconspicuous". It also gets off badly in the Musikexpress : “The new mix of disco elements, electro pop and Jon Marsh's Depeche Mode voice is pretty undefined. Conscience [...] is too shallow to listen to and too poppy to dance. ” Allmusic judges similarly , because the bland and shallow synth pop and dance pieces were no competition for the Pet Shop Boys or Erasure .

When it comes to X , things are "darker and harder", said the magazine Mädchen , which is particularly due to the texts in which Jon Marsh dealt with the death of his father. Both The Rough Guide to Rock and The Encyclopedia of Popular Music are stagnating . In the Musikexpress it was said that the album contained pleasant, "tracks that bubbled away", but the deeper New Order's domain was penetrated, the weaker the result.

Discography

Studio albums

year	Title music label	Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements (Year, title, music label , placements, weeks, awards, notes)				Remarks
		DE	AT	UK	US
1990	Happiness WEA / EastWest	-	-	UK14th gold (… Where.)UK	US154 (9 weeks) US	First published: February 1990 Producers: Martyn Phillips, Paul Staveley O'Duffy
	Blissed Out EastWest	-	-	UK38 (2 weeks) UK	-	First release: November 1990 Remixes of tracks by Happiness Producers: Martyn Phillips, Jon Marsh, Paul Staveley O'Duffy, Adam & Eve
1993	Conscience EastWest	DE47 (11 weeks) DE	AT22 (6 weeks) AT	UK2 gold (12 weeks)UK	-	First published: February 1993 Producers: Helena Marsh, Jon Marsh
1996	X EastWest	-	-	UK25 (3 weeks) UK	-	First published: April 1996 Producer: The Beloved

Compilations

• 1987: Where It Is (Flim Flam)
• 1997: Single File (EastWest)
• 2005: The Sun Rising ( Warner )
• 2011: Sweet Harmony: The Best of the Beloved (2 CDs; Music Club Deluxe ; release: March 21)

Singles and EPs

year	Title album	Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements (Year, title, album , rankings, weeks, awards, notes)					Remarks
		DE	AT	CH	UK	Dance
1989	Your Love Takes Me Higher Happiness	-	-	-	UK91 (3 weeks) UK	Dance9 (9 weeks) Dance	First published: January 1989 Authors: Jon Marsh, Steve Waddington
	The Sun Rising Happiness	-	-	-	UK26 (11 weeks) UK	-	First published: October 2, 1989 Authors: Jon Marsh, Steve Waddington
1990	Hello happiness	-	-	-	UK19 (7 weeks) UK	Dance4 (10 weeks) Dance	First published: January 15, 1990 Author: Jon Marsh
	Your Love Takes Me Higher (Remix) Blissed Out	-	-	-	UK39 (3 weeks) UK	-	First published: March 1990 Mix: Adam & Eve
	Time After Time Blissed Out	-	-	-	UK46 (4 weeks) UK	-	First published: May 21, 1990 Author: Jon Marsh
	It's Alright Now Blissed Out	-	-	-	UK48 (3 weeks) UK	-	First published: October 1990 Author: Jon Marsh
1993	Sweet Harmony Conscience	DE6 (24 weeks) DE	AT3 (13 weeks) AT	CH6 (21 weeks) CH	UK8 (10 weeks) UK	Dance23 (9 weeks) Dance	First published: January 1993 Authors: Jon Marsh, Helena Marsh
	You've Got Me Thinking Conscience	-	-	-	UK23 (4 weeks) UK	-	First published: March 1993 Authors: Jon Marsh, Helena Marsh
	Outer Space Girl Conscience	DE76 (5 weeks) DE	-	-	UK38 (2 weeks) UK	-	First publication: August 1993 Authors: Jon Marsh, Helena Marsh
1994	Rock to the Rhythm of Love Conscience	-	-	-	-	Dance40 (2 weeks) Dance	First published: June 1994 Authors: Jon Marsh, Helena Marsh
1996	Satellite X	-	-	-	UK19 (3 weeks) UK	-	First published: March 1996 Authors: Jon Marsh, Helena Marsh
	Ease the Pressure X	-	-	-	UK43 (2 weeks) UK	-	First published: July 29, 1996 Authors: The Beloved

More singles

• 1986: A Hundred Words
• 1986: This Means War
• 1987: Forever Dancing / Surprise Me
• 1987: Happy Now ( EP )
• 1988: Acid Love
• 1988: Loving Feeling (release: September)
• 1990: Blissed Out (Promo)
• 1993: Celebrate Your Life
• 1995: 1000 Years from Today (Promo)
• 1996: Deliver Me
• 1996: Physical Love / Three Steps to Heaven
• 1996: Crystal Wave (Promo)
• 1997: The Sun Rising (Remix) (Release: August 18th)
• 1998: It's a Universal Thing / All That Jazz (release: April 13th)
• 2000: With You (released July 31)
• 2001: Timeslip ( White Label )
• 2008: Open Emotion (Promo)

swell

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h} Colin Larkin (Ed.): The Encyclopedia of Popular Music . 5th edition. Omnibus Press / Muze, London 2011, ISBN 0-85712-595-8 , Beloved ( google.de [accessed on March 24, 2015] online unpaginated).
2. ↑ Joeg_67: The Beloved. Live reviews. In: songkick.com. Accessed March 24, 2015 . 
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m} Justin Lewis: The Beloved . In: Peter Buckley (Ed.): The Rough Guide to Rock. The Definitive Guide to more than 1200 Artists and Bands . 3rd, expanded and completely revised edition. Rough Guides Ltd./Penguin Books Ltd., London 2003, ISBN 1-84353-105-4 , pp. 82 ( google.de [accessed on March 24, 2015]).
4. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Biography. (No longer available online.) In: thebeloved.com. Archived from the original on December 9, 2013 ; accessed on March 24, 2015 . 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.  
5. ↑ The Beloved. In: eagle-imusic. Accessed March 24, 2015 . 
6. ↑ ^{a b c d e} WEA (Ed.): Product Facts. The Beloved. Happiness . 1990 (laundry slip).
7. ^ Frankie Teardrop: The Beloved - Demos & Peel Sessions 1983-85. In: systemsofromance.com. August 28, 2013, accessed March 24, 2015 . 
8. ↑ ^{a b c d} Jason Ankeny: The Beloved. Biography by Jason Ankeny. In: allmusic.com. Accessed March 24, 2015 . 
9. ^ Jon Marsh: Jon Marsh (The Beloved) on the Best Ecstasy Records ... In: testpressing.wordpress.com. February 27, 2010, accessed on March 24, 2015 (English, introduction: "Stolen wholesale from the DJ History thread about the best ecstasy records, here's Jon Marsh talking about 'The Sun Rising'."). 
10. ↑ ^{a b c d} Club stars and married couple . In: girls . No. 10/96 , April 30, 1996, pp. 82 .
11. ^ Robbert Tilli: The Beloved Still Loved After Long Absence . In: Music & Media . January 30, 1993, p. 27 .
12. ↑ John Mitchell: Beatsworkin '/ reform, Brighton. In: theguardian.com. May 8, 2010, accessed March 24, 2015 . 
13. ^ Diedrich Diederichsen: The Beloved. Where It Is . In: Spex . January 1988, LP review, p. 48 .
14. ^ Andre Luth: The European House . In: Musikexpress / Sounds . No. 416 , September 1990, A la Carte, p. 8th f .
15. ↑ The Beloved . In: Musikexpress / Sounds . No. 446 , March 1993, Kurz & klein, p. 82 .
16. ^ William Ruhlmann: The Beloved. Conscience. Allmusic Review by William Ruhlmann. In: allmusic.com. Accessed March 24, 2015 . 
17. ↑ H [orst] M [ichel]: The Beloved. X . In: Musikexpress / Sounds . No. 484 , May 1996, panels from A - Z, p. 58 .
18. ↑ ^{a b} Chart sources: Singles Albums DE UK US
19. ↑ Gold / platinum database UK
20. ^ Joel Whitburn : Hot Dance / Disco 1974-2003, ISBN 978-0-89820-156-7 .

Remarks

1. ↑ The short biographies are very similar in wording, but differ markedly from Waddington and Gausden when it comes to the order in which they join. The last member to join was Waddington, according to Allmusic , the Encyclopedia of Popular Music and the Rough Guide to Rock . On the other hand, the band's homepage, another website listed as an individual reference and the English language version of Wikipedia name Gausden as the latest entry. In addition to the weight of the self-portrayal, the fact that the core of the band consisted of Cambridge students speaks for Waddington as the former member.

Web links

• The Beloved at Allmusic (English)
• The Beloved at Discogs (English)