The Associates: Have the years been kind?

I reckon their best work is on the early singles compliation 'Fourth Drawer Down'. Amazingly each track is completely different from the rest ('White Car in Germany' ' Message Oblique Speech' 'Tell me Easter's on Friday', 'Kitchen Person' - each sounds like nothing else you've ever heard, yet after the first ten seconds could ONLY be by The Associates. I'm not all that fond of Sulk, mainly because they've ditched some of the experimentation. I don't really like the glacial, brittle production that they've used across the whole album. I respect the fact that they've gone for an extreme sound, It just doesn't work for me.

The Associates required you to enter their world to enjoy their music, not always easy, but worth the effort.

Dr. C

I'd go against the grain of the good Doctor - I find the first two CDs much harder going than "Sulk" - rewarding to be sure but still tough ("White Car In Germany" though is tremendous with no equivocation). "Sulk" though sparkles - I love the 'glacial' production and the hysteria of it all. And "Party Fears Two" is one of those handful of singles I occasionally get worked up about and pronounce "THIS IS THE GREATEST SINGLE OF ALL TIME" which means in that instant it least, it is.

Also in 1999, Uncut, Simon Reynolds reviewed the reissues and highly praised the ambition of Associates music. These reissues made album of the month feature in Uncut.

Associates along with Cabaret Voltaire will be remembered for many years to come.

Also I think their should be a national curriculum for kids in Secondary schools to sample the more creative pop and rock acts of the past years, then they would have a greater understanding of the context of interesting music.

The Associates would be on this curriculum.

Oh, and "Party Fears Two" *is* the greatest single of all time. One of the five, anyway.

The Associates WILL be remembered long after some of today's POPSTARS are long forgotten.

But, like most of us i suspect, for all the genuine affection I have for 'Sulk' I have nothing else by the Associates or the late Billy Mackenzie. Any recommendations?

DG: I have seen this record you mention, I'm sure: in Tower or Virgin... Check Amazon (or somewhere...)

"Club Country" on TOTP2 just now *unbelievably* awesome: the sort of thing that justifies these mostly tedious clip shows in one transcendent moment.

I was wrong...boy was I EVER wrong.

I think The Associates did 4 albums in total, the last was after Rankine left. In fact they did a complete re-mix of their first LP and re-released it, anyone remeber that, it wasn't a patch on the original though.

Of course, Rankine-era Associates are one of the all-time GRATES.

Am I a fhoul for feeling that "Club Country" looms large over "Party Fears Two"?

http://www.btinternet.com/~cateran/edinburgh/sinatra1x1.gif

I was pestering people in the office by humming the tune to see if anybody knew what it was but nobody knew. Then just the other day they played it on advert for the CD "Alternative Eighties" so I had to buy it. Now my mind is at rest! Strange CD, mind.

It's probably a better album than "Wild & Lonely", but probably less than essential if you've already got the Rankine-era albums.

I seem to remember that there is still supposed to be another album's worth of unreleased Boris Blank collaborations. That must be the last of the releasable stuff in the vaults.

With regard to the posthumous releases, I would have prefered "Smile"-esque compilations of the Winter Academy and Outerpol albums, as opposed to the scattershot approach of "Beyond The Sun" et al.

BTW, I've still got a sealed copy of the deleted "Eurocentric" if anyone is after it.

Didn't realise it was already worth £130. At this rate it's going to overtake my other two 'nest egg' records (Radiohead's "Drill" EP (vinyl) and XTC's "Wrapped in Grey" CD single).

Ned, you might be confusing "Eurocentric" with "Outernational" - Billy's only 'proper' solo album, released in 1992. I've got one of those as well, but it's far too good to sell...

it still sounds fresh as hell to my ears btw.

all remastered in the last three years.

my theory which is mine: they slid a little out of institutional memory bcz they didn't generate much good writing (morley's is mostly the fizz of his high enthusiasm and plus no great music writer is patchier anyway lol) and they didn't generate much good writing bcz they're very hard to write about -- and *that's a mark of how good they are*

i don't think musicality is ineffable but i do think it's highly evasive and that we often write abt anything but (even when it looks like we're doing striahgt-up musicology) and musicians that slip this leash are worth paying attention to precisely bcz of the challenge they present

thread that garnered few non-baffled responses lol:
Can a music matter if its fans don't especially want to read about it?

i'll have a drink and then not phone my brother up

bap de la bap!

The first two records are a good example of how baffling experiencing them in real time must have been. Can’t think of a stylistic evolution quite like going from The Affectionate Punch to the Fourth Drawer Down singles to Sulk in only two years. And they are all magnificent!

I love Perhaps but McKenzie and Rankine were a real team.

Paperhouse haunts me, such a beautiful tune. Love Billy’s scat breakdown at the end, lest it get too majestic.

sund4r being very extremely wrong abt the associates has an upside: i have been listening to them all day

Excellent approach. And yeah, very hard to write about. I've done my best over time but it's hard to approach the ineffable, really.

"my theory which is mine: they slid a little out of institutional memory bcz they didn't generate much good writing (morley's is mostly the fizz of his high enthusiasm and plus no great music writer is patchier anyway lol) and they didn't generate much good writing bcz they're very hard to write about -- and *that's a mark of how good they are*"

The second part is a very good point. I grew up listening to a lot of music that simply wasn't written about, because what was there to say about it? How could the typical NME / Melody Maker writer cover Lifeforms or 76:14? What would they say? "It sounds good and I like the noises". A bit of Googling suggests that Melody Maker really liked 76:13, but my hunch is that whatever coverage it had was dwarfed, utterly dwarfed - that's not offensive, by the way - dwarfed by the same newspaper's coverage of Martin Rossiter, because he was good for a quote and his lyrics could be unpicked. He worked on the page.

But I disagree with the first point, because I don't think pop music writing really translates into a legacy. Viz Martin Rossiter, who isn't written about nowadays. There has to be at least a couple of crowd-pleasing hits. Bands develop a legacy because their music catches the ear of people on the radio and before long "Weather With You" and "Somewhere in My Heart" are radio staples, because they're crowd-pleasing hits. Or alternatively they develop a following on YouTube.

The Associates' problem is that they had a particular style. Their songs have a swoopy, almost jazzy feel. They don't have punchy, simple melodies, they feel tailored for McKenzie's voice, so they swoop. That's the best word I can think of. Their singles (I'm not familiar with the albums) have swoopy, meandering melodies, which is great because it's unexpected but doesn't lend itself to penetrating people's skulls.

Alan Rankine did a really good C86 show interview a few months back

Can I point out here that the Associates did actually have hit singles. And "Sulk" was a Top 10 album.

Despite everything that's ever been written, Perhaps is a blindingly good album

I started listening to The Associates because of sreynolds' Rip It Up and Start Again, but I don't remember what he wrote there that made them sound so compelling.

Lol, glad to inspire a revive. Tbf I only heard one song once in the context of a thread about a different band.

Go & Listen to the first 3 lps . Especially the 2nd 2 I think.
Sulk is so great, 4th Drawer Down hangs together pretty well for a compilation of singles tracks.
& the first one is pretty fantastic too. Just difficult to rival Sulk cos that is something else.
& everything got expanded a couple of years ago.

But there are Van der Graaf records.

I always flick between Sulk and Fourth Drawer Down as favourite. And seemingly so does everyone I know.

I prefer the first album but, then, you don't know me.

arent you tom d of ilx?

That's just a nasty rumour.

First album is amazing, it arouses emotions in me that I didn’t know I had.

Associates are not so far from a glam/post-punk Peter Hammill/VDGG - complex melodies, dramatic vocals, harsh textures, creating a "sound-world" as much as a band performance:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0Hccc3xqeA

What I said in another thread about Killing Joke combining sardonic attitude with hysteria applies to this band too, with an extra dash of camp.

I think my favorite moment of theirs may be the close to Skipping where Rankine is playing that glacial roller rink synthesizer line and Billy just starts belting out “SKIP SKIP/SKIP SKIP SKIP /SKIP SKIP/SKIP SKIP SKIP /SKIPPING!?!?” It literally gives me chills.

The four chords they repeat at the end of the song are like a stairway rising up into nowhere.

Cleaning house to The Affectionate Punch🧼🕺

cleaning Paper House?

Don't forget to clean the mattress downstairs full of brown peppered holes.

Cleaning house to _The Affectionate Punch_🧼🕺

wrong album obv, and also just an affectionate punch

Don't forget to tidy up the fourth drawer down.

Amused as always by y'all ❤️

After all the cleaning, you'll be sweaty and dirty so you'll have a shower...

zed is the black sheep of the alphabet.

wait am I doing this right?

Are you cleaning your property girl?

Just read that Alan Rankine died yesterday.

Yeah, news spreading rapidly. A damn shame, too young and he was such a vocal supporter of the band’s legacy and Billy’s genius. So strange to think that the remaining core musicians that created _Sullk_ are Michael Dempsey and Martha Ladly.

On FB a few years ago, there were some whisperings that he and Dempsey were considering a tour with another singer, possibly David McAlmont. Clearly nothing came of it, but I would have been OK with checking it out.

It would have made a lovely tribute show, and McAlmont did work with Mackenzie in the years before the latter's passing. Ah well.

Oh fuck no! RIP Alan, thanks for the beautiful music

RIP Alan Rankine, creator of amongst the most joyous magnificent pop music of all time.

No Associates = No Ladytron.

💔https://t.co/lLujdh3ucf

— Ladytron (@LadytronMusic) January 3, 2023

very, very sad news. lots of people i know locally were taught by him and all, without exception, found him an incredibly inspiring human being. he'd really go above and beyond to help people out.

I heard a couple of pretty great podcast interviews with Rankine a few months ago. I think this was one of them, think there was at least one other
https://open.spotify.com/episode/2NHxKyjHbAevQBWjFpy1Y6?si=1f287889b2e54345

would have been great to get a memoir from him.

Did love his instrument playing on the Associates material. Wish there was more elsewhere, not sure if his solo material was anywhere near as good. He seemed to touch on Krautrock among a number of other things in the textures on that Associates stuff anyway

would have been great to get a memoir from him.

he was quite often a 'talking head' on scottish televsion music programmes and always had the best stories.

he was also such a phenomenal producer and i wonder if he was the first person in the world ever to distort an 808 kick drum?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnHaXrjjWEQ

as much as i loved billy's voice, their eponymous instrumental was always a favourite of mine. what a great chuggy groove:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtC8zVAsJa8

yes! so great! one of my fave 12"s ever.

Having only discovered the Associates and Billy McKenzie a few years ago (one of those, why didn’t I discover them sooner things) this is sad. Rankine and McKenzie were such a great team.

Hey, never too late to realize how great they were.

I only discovered them a few years ago on a documentary about 80s scottish music. Sulk is by far my favorite thing by them and I really wish it could have kept going with that lineup. Will watch the Glamour Chase documentary soon and hope I can track down his solo albums someday.

Do they appear in the recent book Hungry Beat oral history thing on Scottish independent music. Presumably must do. I think the Pop Group do but had a very short look at the book.

Very briefly.

BA Robertson is so fucking weird.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhM-nO4Yjjw